The Hollow Woman
5 years ago
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
A box of nothing.
How quiet your mailbox is, knowing you will not return to it. Anonymous spam, updates from a news site you signed up for, that will not unsuscribe. Emails from your school account, labeled "from me." As if you were still sending yourself reminders about alumni meetings, lectures, web sites for law studenmts. Your friends are gone. They know you won't answer. I keep after it, peeking in, pruning the spam; knowing you will not return.
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Heavy
ReplyDelete~ by Mary Oliver
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among the lions),
"It's not the weight you carry
but how you carry it --
books, bricks, grief --
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled --
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love to which there is no reply?
Thinking of you with love this weekend.