Tasks and the needs of relationships un-scroll before me
today like the prairie once spread its options before pioneers of the American
West. I’ve neglected my responsibilities in favor of a love affair and, while
I’ve been so blissfully occupied, the ‘to do’ list I keep running to maintain
momentum against entropy, just slipped away. I did not miss it. But now, today,
I do. I don’t even know where I put it and I’m not in a position to live
without its gravitational, its navigational, properties.
On the other hand my life has been changed by love. And I want that too.
Five generations of people have been born on earth in the
length of time it has taken me to learn that a lasting love requires huge
tensile strength of the creative self as well as the ability and desire to set
that self aside for the good of the other, or the two of you together. If
either one of those two capacities are missing, the structure is unstable. And
living in love necessitates a fluidity of the inner world that allows you to go
back and forth between the two. In other words, the list may not be an
important part of the moment, but one needs to know where to find it.
I’m terrible at this. I’m either all momentum or all
surrender but the transitions between these two states, which I think should
take no more than seconds, minutes at the most, leave me feeling clubbed in the
cerebellum. So I find myself sitting mouth agape, listening to the clock tick,
watching the wind move leaves around, while I await the arrival of my single self
and the ability to ‘get on with it’—whatever ‘it’ is. I still can’t find the
list.
In service of my responsibilities I could do any of the
following today: put wood hardener on the exterior damage of the bay window,
epoxy and caulk the interior, vacuum, return phone calls, do one of the two art
projects I’ve already been paid an advances for, mow two acres of lawn, make
dinner, clean the refrigerator, get out the ladder and poison and putty borer
bee holes. . . or wash my hair.
Surely I’ll do some of those things. And when I come across
my list there will be things I can scratch off. But I am remembering Thursday
with you at the hospital and I anticipate Tuesday, already pregnant with the
six hours it will take me to drive to Annapolis
Thursday
You are up there in a
windowless room
Having your guts
probed,
Infused by a chemical
warmth that will wear off
Long before we get
the news.
Of course, there’ll
still be wine.
I couldn’t wait in
the claustrophobic grey
Of the area assigned
to relatives with its relentless television
And its miasma of
boredom and fear.
I bolted for the
courtyard below.
Three ginkgo trees,
picnic tables of dark green under wide umbrellas,
An embracing wall of
flowers awaited defectors;
Yet I was the sole
celebrant of the sunshine
And blue sky that embraced
this hospital.
It’s your fault.
You’ve pulled the
animal in me straight up
From where it’s been
curled and waiting all these years,
Its presence
suspected but never verified, its growl, its pulse, its ferocious
Capacity for pleasure
claiming me; you did that.
Such creatures don’t
sit docilely in waiting rooms
Once they’ve found
their basic nature, their pulse.
They need a breeze.
They need sun.
When waiting, they
find a piece of earth and go to ground.
When it’s time to go
in and claim you, I will.
You’ll be woozy and
we’ll meander. Like old people. Oh! We are
old people.
Oh! You who pierced
me with a blue gaze,
Who revel in the
parts of me others have barely tolerated,
I will hold your
bruised arm in my knotty fingers and squeeze.
I will watch your sun-filled
hair respond to the breeze.
