Naomi gave me such a lovely poem on my wedding day: "Lucky Life" by Gerald Stern. I read it for the first time the day after, when we came home from the haunted bed and breakfast and were joyously opening gifts with my brothers and sisters (they clapped for every gift for awhile, until they got tired of it) . It was the sweetest afternoon, I remember the sun streaming in through the windows and the kitchen cluttered with flowers and fruit left over from the reception. I read the poem to everyone; it made me weep then and it still does when I read it out loud. Not many of my words are worth anything but when I feel that bittersweetness wash over me I wish so much I could write. I wish I were humble and smart enough to appreciate how much glory is in each day; even these gray ones that I'm wishing away in a graduation-obsessed frenzy, and even though it's probably blasphemous for me to think I understand anything about that poem at age 26. I wanted to say that the last lines are a constant refrain in my mind, in anguish and in triumph. What a lucky miracle life we have right now. So often I feel like pain sweeps around us and through us but never between us. It has been a beautiful 6 months.
Here are some cheesy pictures to accompany this somewhat solemn post. Here you have the portrayal of environmental neglect that is our living room, and a creepy glowy-eyed kitten. (I was trying to show you the balloons.) You can also see some of our pictures from the Dominican Republic, and my sister's Christmas gift to Jonathan, which was a portrait of him slaughtering zombies. Thank you Jonny for surprising me after such a wearisome day! I love you so much.
TOREADAS!!!! Benditos sean!!!!!
Lucky life isn't one long string of horrorsand there are moments of peace, and pleasure, as I lie in between the blows.
Lucky I don't have to wake up in Phillipsburg, New Jersey,
on the hill overlooking Union Square or the hill overlooking
Kuebler Brewery or the hill overlooking SS. Philip and James
but have my own hills and my own vistas to come back to.
Each year I go down to the island I add
one more year to the darkness;
and though I sit up with my dear friends
trying to separate the one year from the other,
this one from the last, that one from the former,
another from another,
after a while they all get lumped together,
the year we walked to Holgate,
the year our shoes got washed away,
the year it rained,
the year my tooth brought misery to us all.
This year was a crisis. I knew it when we pulled
the car onto the sand and looked for the key.
I knew it when we walked up the outside steps
and opened the hot icebox and began the struggle
with swollen drawers and I knew it when we laid out
the sheets and separated the clothes into piles
and I knew it when we made our first rush onto
the beach and I knew it when we finally sat
on the porch with coffee cups shaking in our hands.
My dream is I'm walking through Phillipsburg, New Jersey,
and I'm lost on South Main Street. I am trying to tell,
by memory, which statue of Christopher Columbus
I have to look for, the one with him slumped over
and lost in weariness or the one with him
vaguely guiding the way with a cross and globe in
one hand and a compass in the other.
My dream is I'm in the Eagle Hotel on Chamber Street
sitting at the oak bar, listening to two
obese veterans discussing Hawaii in 1942,
and reading the funny signs over the bottles.
My dream is I sleep upstairs over the honey locust
and sit on the side porch overlooking the stone culvert
with a whole new set of friends, mostly old and humorless.
Dear waves, what will you do for me this year?
Will you drown out my scream?
Will you let me rise through the fog?
Will you fill me with that old salt feeling?
Will you let me take my long steps in the cold sand?
Will you let me lie on the white bedspread and study
the black clouds with the blue holes in them?
Will you let me see the rusty trees and the old monoplanes one more year?
Will you still let me draw my sacred figures
and move the kites and the birds around with my dark mind?
Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life. Lucky life.
