Day 6, a poem a day in the month of may
Connection
Day Six, friends.
Can I be honest? Some days, I don't like my poetry at all. Some days I’m embarrassed to even send the words out to you, to let you see what I’ve attempted to write, what I’ve attempted to hold close and express to the world.
We all struggle with words, with emotions, with how to be in the world.
So I’m reminding us here to take a deep breath and lean into our very humanity, to those parts of us that draw us to one another.
Today’s word is Connection. And we need that right now.
I was showing a two year old the way magnets work, the surprise when one end connected and the other end refused. I’m still floored by it, honestly, the way magnetism works, the way we seem to work as human beings, choosing or refusing connection. How did we get this way? How did the walls get so high that we build to protect ourselves from one another’s abuses? And at what point do we choose to connect again, to bare our hearts and hope that they will be held, seen, and believed to be sacredly created? You and I, we are magnetic, constantly choosing how to make sense of a world where we repel and draw one another, where we can abuse and then tenderly care. I guess we should all become like a two-year-old again, and let ourselves be surprised at the wonder of a deep and tender connection, at the wonder of pain and embarrassment, at the reality that we are capable of all the hate and all the love that could ever possibly exist in a world full of the stories that draw us in.
Island
For all of us who are sure
we are islands, inhabited or not,
remote or nearby,
there comes a time when
we’re given a glimpse
of a different reality.
Someone enters our life,
or we find ourselves in theirs,
or a whole lot of both.
First, it may only seem peninsula-like,
with but a narrow stretch of connection.
Then comes the day when
it all breaks up again;
not merely a canal trenched between us,
but a catastrophic explosion,
as life evaporates
and with it, love.
Unmoored, we seem to drift,
no rhyme or reason,
no hope or season.
Then, one day, a memory revisits
in ways unimaginable,
awakening us to the reality that
we’ve never been alone.
Both love and the one with whom
we discovered and experienced it
have accompanied us all along;
silent most days, but always there,
watching, holding, giving.
Now that we know,
it gradually becomes easier
to feel, if not see; and others
who have also experienced
the island’s isolation are pontoons,
if not bridge-builders for us,
reflecting the light of their loves
into the depths of our shadows.
—————-
*No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main;*
(John Donne)
I rarely write about motherhood
Whenever I try, my words
fail to describe how
when I hold my child
I seem to hold a
small blazing sun
too bright to see fully
or maybe a planet
that hasn’t been
explored yet
or maybe something
not so celestial
maybe just the first
yellow bloom of the season
precious because
it is one of many
but at that moment
the only one
And then again
none of these fit
and all of them do
And there is only
that small hand
reaching up beside me
pulling me along