Like a door
the body opened and
the soul looked out.
Timidly at first, then
less timidly
until it was safe.
Then in hunger it ventured.
Then in brazen hunger,
then at the invitation
of any desire.
Promiscuous one, how will you find
god now? How will you
ascertain the divine?
Even the garden you were told to live in the body, not
outside it, and suffer in it
if that comes to be necessary.
How will god find you
if you are never in one place
long enough, never
in the home he gave you?
Or do you believe
you have no home, since god
never meant to contain you?
-Louise Glück
*There have been tremendous amounts of poetry penetrating my life of late (written and unwritten). I thought I'd share some of my favorites. L.G's short anthology "Vita Nova" found me at a random salvation type store in northern maine on labor day weekend in 2004 and our meeting was one of those fateful events that change your life. The poem " Mutable Earth" has followed me though many continents and relationships, rifts and valleys. Tonight I returned to her and was surprised at the last lines of her last poem in this anthology. It reads:
I thought my life was over and my heart was broken.
Then I moved to Cambridge.
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1 comment:
This was my first LG experience...it won't be my last...thanks.
Don't know why, but as her sentiment sank in, another Longfellow poem bubbled up:
The Arrow and the Song
I SHOT an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where:
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak,
I found the arrow still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
btw, a friend gave me a bike awhile back that I have not used...I hope you'll let me give it to you.
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