Roll away the stone, that great Weight upon your heart calling you cursed, And walk with me. I’m not one you’ll recognize But I’m quite alive and wanting to walk with you, To that Sea, where mist-shrouds lift from shorelines, Where cast-nets come back full of fish, And the rising sun looks just like a coal-fire. We’ll clear a space and eat together And everything you need, to be, will come. Everything given water-of-love will green, Kindness and empathy will sprout and tiller, Gentle mystery of the beautiful mover, will bud, Latent longing to be the joy of another, will blossom, And the love that casts away fear, That lives as though death were not, Trusts the delicate mercies whispered in the Warm rays and winds and rains of life, Will bloom you — You, kissed hard, Uncursed, weightlessly rising and quite alive.
Sometimes there’s numbness. Not unlike your son’s limbs. Who leans on a sun-bleached maple wood cane as we slow-walk through the clinic’s achingly cavernous lobby, pass by a baby grand and a man wearing a head scarf playing Come Fly With Me which changes to Amazing Grace which changes to Fly Me To The Moon.
Sometimes there’s fear. Like God’s a lightning flash and you’re high-summer chaparral. Or helplessness. Like you’re a wandering drunk and God’s an unexploded mine. Or anguish. Where if you remember to eat — it’s ashes with tears and you feel like that wilderness owl, or those biblical blades of withering grass.
Sometimes there’s nothing, I mean, not nothing, there’s your true love, there’s family, there’s memories, meals with friends, Merlot on a patio overlooking a well-kept golf course and your pretty decent life, which you have no right to be ungrateful for — yet, seems all you do is spin plates in the rotunda of your mind, and wait for grimness or light.
Then, sometimes, you’re listening to some Spotify playlist and hear a pan flute, and you’re not even a fan of pan flute, but there are these notes, I don’t know, so immaculate and immediate as to bead your skin, so free, like those black terns that followed the tractor and harrows, cut sharp pieces from air that fell whistling — next thing you’re sinking and soaring, you’re root-bound and buoyant, you’re plant and bird all at once — do you think maybe that’s a little shaft of afterlife? come to say go easy on yourself, tell you you’re not alone, come to say it’ll be okay, come to unveil The Holy, right where you’re standing, in a hotel kitchenette, slicing carrots for your son’s supper.
Zion says, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her baby, or disown the child of her womb? Though she might forget, I never could forget you. —Isaiah 49:14–15
(After Joy Ladin’s poem, Forgetting)
Sing
You were walking along the shore not far from your house, and I asked you to look out at the sea, smell its honey-green waves, taste the deep and cheer, and all you heard was a pickup truck, rumbling over the road above.
Sixty years ago, if I’d whispered, sing, you’d have cried out like a tree full of seagulls, joy smitten.
I’ve given you this shore, the oyster beds at low tide, the barnacles your boots use for traction, and for amusement, otters gambolling on the boat dock. But you don’t sing. Not a peep.
I’ve even given you someone interesting to walk with, someone who’ll never forget her children, your children:
speaking of — I can help celebrate, blow out candles, uncork wine. I like a party.
Or I’ll sit with you in the gloom of a waiting room. I know of sorrow.
So many connections. You could pay attention.
And now you’ll walk home to find a photo, sent by a friend — a cherry tree perfectly framed in a puddle.
I’ll go on. I’ll play the clown, ride a donkey, wear a cow bell. I’ll jabber, rattle the gravel in my rain stick above the sound of your bicycle while you’re gliding down Maple Mountain. I’ll thunder above your breathing while your climbing Tzouhalem. I’ll keep pointing out arbutus, always green, its bark, colours to die for, and I’ll show you, as close as your window, the sun, the rain, the mist settling on Salt Spring.
I’ll go on as long as it takes. I won’t forget. How could I? I’ve carved your name in the palms of my hands.
You’ve forgotten to sing my name. But I don’t forget — I’m singing yours now.
Tray full of morning light — with coffee; Wild spirals of cliff swallows and six-winged angels; Collie so happy your home she levitates with her tail; Flames of deadfall bonfires forming massive flowers; Churched-up villagers advancing with torches — talked down by a twelve-year-old; Exiled Queen finding her true calling in carpentry; Preacher speaking on the uselessness of exacting doctrines; Wind-up Victrola and a Ma Rainey record washing up on some uncharted island; Watermelon daiquiri and mandolin music coming through palm trees; Silvery traces of waltzes left over from last night’s moon dance; Story of Mary Oliver at a gala with a wounded pigeon in her pocket; The cut on your arm that left a star; One whole day, free of pain; Search plane spotting your child in a clearing just before nightfall; Flashlight wolf-faces and laughter descending from the attic; Warm glistening feel of complete darkness; Hammock and the drowsy hum of your fridge in the height of summer; Endless prairie road — yellow-glow filling-station sign rising in a moonless horizon; Midnight swim — your bioluminescent body; The billion echoes of afterlife in a smile; A series of likenesses vanishing into bloom; a blessing, Like the low holy whistle of a slow coming train.
