I’ve built my house,
on a bed of dreams,
a million little hopeful timbers,
with nails made of joy and grief.
Life takes hold of us that way,
you know –
the sweet made sweeter
by bitter loss,
the loss made better by
the time that came before.
Funny, that I didn’t even realize,
how the building and building
never felt like a chore.
And now, my house moves
with me wherever I go,
but also stands
forever at a crossroads,
a perpetual choice between
this and that
or that or that.
And though it doesn’t matter,
I wonder:
How many lives have I
not chosen?
life
Wild Things (A Poem)
I’m thankful for the wild things.
The dew that slicks the blades of grass,
the bee at his work,
the birds who fill the air with song,
the kits in their den dreaming of play
and the deer in the meadow bathed in snow –
outside my door,
a whole world turns not in days and hours,
but in moments,
seasons and sensations.
In the changing of the leaves,
the rising and setting sun,
these little lives go on and on
until they don’t,
and then, like a breath between words,
they’re gone.
How much we could learn
from the brave, wild things,
if we’d only each take time
to wait and watch,
to sit patiently with
the silence before the storm,
the crickets’ evening concerto,
the breeze through the fields,
the morning’s cacophony.
They exist, not for us to see
as a space apart,
but with us, in us.
We, too, could be brave, wild things.
We know it in our hearts.
On Time, Change, and a Maine Coon Cat
Graham took this picture of Merlin today:
Sometimes it hits me just how big he’s gotten.
I hardly ever find myself wishing that I could stop time. I generally like thinking of the future. I find it exciting, all those possibilities and knowing that if I’m going through a rough patch, it’s only for right now. And that applies to good times, too. Everything is only a moment, and while sometimes that’s hard, I generally view it as a net positive. Being stuck, even in a happy time, would just be boring.
And then, I look at this little kitten that just won’t stop growing and I can’t help but think, “Slow down!”
I don’t have children, so this is as close as I get, I think, to what parents feel watching their little ones change every day. Merlin is a new cat almost every hour. He finds new places to explore and to nap, he likes something and then he doesn’t, he wants all the attention and then to be all by himself. The only constant so far is that he desperately wants to be Annie’s friend. She’s not interested. He’s not giving up.
He’s almost six months old, and I wonder what he’ll look like, what he’ll be like, in another six months. And then in the year after that, and after that. It’s exciting, as it always is for me, to think of the future. But it’s also a little sad, because he won’t be this new baby forever. He’ll grow and change and he won’t be the same. And eventually, hopefully a long, long time from now, and just like Gatsby, who is still so very loved, he’ll die. But he’ll always be Merlin.
(Feel free to laugh as I talk about my pet like a human. I’ve long ago accepted my impending future as a crazy cat lady.)
And then I remember that that’s true for me, too. And for Graham. And for all of us. It’s easy to get caught up, even knowing that everything is really, truly, temporary, in hard times and unhappy feelings, in being down on yourself or feeling stuck in a rut. For many of us, I think the world we live in tends to demand that we occupy a certain spot, like that’s where we’re most useful. But we’re all new, every day. The greatest thing about being human is that we are free to change and to grow as much as we want to, for all the days that we’re alive. And we’ll still be us, even as we learn lessons and try new things and make mistakes.
It’s wonderful, isn’t it?
But it’s also stressful and scary. And absolutely unavoidable. Life happens.
The best we can do is live.
(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Perfectly Imperfect
This picture?
It’s my dad and me, messing up something – words or chords or something…I can’t exactly remember – on a song I’m sure we’ve played a thousand times.
Mistakes happen. Perfection does not exist in this universe.
But happiness does.
So, you know, laugh it off, just keep playing, and enjoy the music. 🙂
There Is a Time (A Poem)
There is a time for
all things –
for grief,
love,
and change,
and for
the way forward.
There is space
enough
in this world to
feel,
to learn,
to see,
and to grow.
This, we know,
even in our worst moments,
and on our
saddest,
sweetest,
shortest,
longest days.
We don’t get to
choose
the minute
or the place,
but they belong to us.
We are
made
to live.
A Virginia Writer's Diary 