Light
I have learned to live
for very little
to accept what shows however small
however inadequate
to sit with it in friendship
but there is still
something else.
There's a light I crave
that shapes mountains and willows,
a radiant mind flaring each morning open
though it paints its gold on all alike:
the long claw of the
promising horizon-smile,
the stiffness that
came into your arms
as you held me, the
little dark murderer's bird
who pecks the grains away.
It's still that light
sifting bees' wings
across sage to kindle the flowers,
lambent as slanting love itself
in earth's witchwild eyes as she holds
in her unprisoned prism'd heart
even us;
even our coarse
demanding
insatiable selves
she will teach the one word:
enough.
July 2023
posted for desperate desires
Images: Cottonwoods III 1944, ©Georgia O'Keefe,
The Thief 1996 ©Jamie Wyeth
Oh, this has such impact!!!!! Yes, earth is trying to teach is what is enough. I adore that small bird, pecking the grains away....and the light, shaping mountains and willows "with a radiant mind, new each morning." So beautiful, Hedge. Just wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sherry. This poem made me think of you as I was writing it. I've edited it a little since it first went up.
Delete"Enough" is desire's sated angel, the start and end of its every bright road. And impossible, because what heart is ever content, truly, with the embrace of what is? This poem goes so far to answer that in a love of description of light in the world received by a "radiant mind." Light on all for its own satisfaction, even as it stiffens and pecks away. We are part of nature's "unprisoned prism heart," and to accept that is to be crowned by light. For today, maybe even tomorrow. It's enough to be taken that far. Great response to the challenge, Hedge.
ReplyDeleteThanks, B. Yes, enough is as close as we get to content, because "more" is always going to be an open-ended abyss we can never fill. The light I crave falls in the Sangre de Christo mountains of New Mexico, where I will never in this life get to live. But I remember it, and so enough. Thanks again, old friend, for your always generous appraisal.
DeleteApparently Google doesn't recognize me on my own blog when I comment from my phone, tho it has no problem elsewhere. This is why AI doesn't impress me. ;)
DeleteLeave it to the Giants to lose us ants in the fray -- Back in 1991 I flew west with my first wife and stepdaughter to visit her family spread through Idaho and Utah. Her father lived in a small town of 200 in the valley of these rather small mountains (for the West) where all day the light grew and shadowed and passed. I think I've seen the light you crave. Not bad for a couple of exiles from Evanston, IL.
DeleteIs it perhaps a necessary outcome of our desires that we cannot ever have enough, else there would be no desire? The buddhist zen monk might say lose the desire and be here now but i think 'being here now' includes our inability to be precisely that. Perhaps in a memory of a light painted radiant mind now we can see that potential 'lambent as slanting love itself.' I loved this and it's feel of something somewhat melancholic or wistful. Beautiful work as always.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Paul. "Be here now" is a mantra from my youth which I never grasped then, and seldom do now, perhaps, as you say, because being human works so much against it. Your thoughtful comments are always appreciated, thanks again.
ReplyDeleteI have always loved the Janis Joplin song Work Me, Lord, in which she sings that "the worst you can say about me is that I'm never satisfied." I need it on a sampler. And so, you see, the idea of enough is both familiar and foreign to me. Familiar in that I have never seen any value in so many things that others want--fame, sexual conquest, wealth, and so on. But foreign because when i do care about something, I know the burning desire that goes with its pursuit, and I just keep trying until I either finish it or exhaust from collaption, to borrow your phrase. I drank partly to slow the revving engine inside me, and it is that same engine, whatever it is, that has me grappling with insomnia of late. And now i come to your poem, with its gentleness, its naturalness and its notion of enough and it sounds richly appealing--and also a million miles away in some respects. Half of me longs for this sanguine mind, while the other half is booming warren Zevon in my ears, singing "I'll sleep when I'm dead." *sigh*
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for being part of my desperate prompt, Joy. It could never be the same without you.
"a radiant mind flaring each morning open" is something devoutly to be wished. I think there are certain kinds of light we associate with a sense of peace or longing, with me it's the slowly fading light on those long June evenings in Dublin, a kind of endless twilight. Wonderful poem.!
ReplyDeleteJIM
Such a wonderful poem. I love it. It is so totally enough in itself I hesitate to add more words in comment or praise. Suzanne - Mapping Uncertainty.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, elegant, and enough.
ReplyDelete