i failed.
i'm giving up
my love for him.
lost, i am lost.
and now it is him
who is lost to me
maybe it is both of us
who are lost.
nothing is ever
as perfect as you want it to be.
in my quite ordinary life
is this extraordinary pain
that mixes with the mundane
my loss feels huge
and yet can't be explaiined.
maybe you are afraid
that if you found the perfect love
it would chew you up
and spit you out
separate your armor from nerves
i lost my love for him
but it is me who is lost.
nothing is ever the way
i want it to be.
i was afraid too.
i tried not to hurt
but everything became a wound
open and seeping
i tried to salvage things
which can't be salvaged
i tried...
maybe foolish, maybe clumsy
to rescue what simply
cannot be rescued.
i failed.
and now he is elsewhere
and both my night
and his night
are drained.
it would be perfect
if love could be found
brought home again
but nothing is ever as perfect
as i want it to be.
...........
life is hard, even when it's easy. when you are alone, you must do anything to believe. when you're abandoned, you have to speak with everything you know and everything you are in order to belong. if you finally have no one to turn to, you have to claim your aloneness. and when all the things you love pass away, and the great family of things and people that you've made around you see you go, you can feel them living on in you.
when one thing dies, everything has to die together and then live on in a different way without it. when one thing is missing, everything is missing and has to be found together in a new whole. and everything wants to be complete. everything wants to go home.
life is like a slow river...it turns suddenly and there you are, at the edge of the water, with everything else. the fire carrying the feast and laughter into the darkness. away from the fire are the unspoken griefs that still make togetherness. but then, just as suddenly...it's a fireless, friendless night again. and you're alone. and you have to speak to the stars, or the clouds, or anything at hand to find your place.
these are the things that i have to tell myself. rather than ask myself...why do i prefer that face to another? why do i weep?
you carry around with you all of these emotions, attached to people and events and memories. things shared. words spoken.
and they feel so heavy sometimes...the weight of the responsibility that you feel to the people that you have pulled close to you for this journey. the knowledge given to you that some who test you the most are those whom you have known in other lives and that it is your job to be with them in whatever way in this life now.
you let your love mean that you extend the olive branch multiple times. you let your heart decide things that your brain is telling you completely different actions for...all in the hopes that you are getting it right. or something close to right.
and there are loves that you feel that you think can never be altered. friendships that you feel are for always.
and then, you feel something which means that you can't pretend any longer...that you can't trump the head for the heart anymore.i just don't know how to make my heart be still, to not pump this love through me.
what i do know is that i've been struggling with figuring out how to just let go of whatever feelings are attached to the feeling of love that i have for them and just release them from my life, without being bitter or undoing the positive that was there. and i've been finding it incredibly hard.
tell myself over and over again that things don't have to end badly, they can just end. you decide...those who don't feel this love pulling them like a river, those who don't want to change, let them sleep. this love...it's beyond search and study and knowing more, beyond trickery and hypocrisy, and so if they want to improve their mind that way, you let them sleep on.
but it is hard to believe these things which my mind repeats. hard to still the heart and brain and longing.
i've given up on my brain. torn the fabric of that knowing to shreds. thrown it away. no longer wrapped up in the beautiful robe of words, i'm completely naked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.
I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.
Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years
in my own voice,
before it was too late
to turn my face again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing,
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and
the sweet confinement of your
aloneness to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This morning on the desk,
facing up,
a poem of Kavenagh's
celebrating a lost love.
"She was the sun," he said,
lives in the fibre
of his arms,
her warmth
through all the years
folding the old man's hand
in hers
of a Sunday
Dublin morning.
Sometimes reading
Kavenagh I look out
at everything
growing so wild
and faithfully beneath
the sky
and wonder
why we are the one
terrible
part of creation
privileged
to refuse our flowing.
I know
in the text of the heart
the flower is our death
and the first opening
of the new life
we have yet to imagine,
but Kavenagh's line
reminds me
how I want to know
that sun,
and how I want to flower
and how I want to claim
my happiness
and how I want to walk
through life
amazed and inarticulate
with thanks.
And how I want to
know that warmth
through
love itself,
and
through the sun itself.
I want to know
that sun
of happiness
when I wake
and see through
my window
the morning color
on the far mountain.
I want to know
when I lean down to the lilies
by the water
and feel their small and
perfect reflection
on my face.
I want to know
that gift
when I walk
innocent through the trees
burning with life
and the green
passion
of the pasture's
first growth,
and I want to know
as lazily
as the cows
that tear at the grass
with their
soft mouths.
I want to know
what I am
and what I am
involved with by loving
this world
as I do.
And I want time
to think of all
the unlived lives:
those that fail to notice
until it is too late,
those with eyes staring
with bitterness,
and those
met on the deathbed
whose mouths are wide
with
unspoken love.
Every year
they keep me faithful
and help me
realize there is more
to lose
than I thought
and more at stake
than I could dream.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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