Monthly Archives: June 2009

I chose today’s poem at random, as usual, and then immediately tried to get another one.  I just didn’t want to think about the first line: “Grief is a Mouse.” I didn’t want to sit here and think about the many forms that grief takes.  My head hurts, my ankle hurts, and I realize that I cannot sneak around the Rules of Random Chance once I put that Genius in charge.  If this is the poem that Chance has put in my hand, then this will have to be the thing I work with today.

Here it is:  #793, c. 1863

Grief is a Mouse —
And chooses the Wainscot in the Breast
For His Shy House —
And baffles quest—

Grief is a Thief — quick startled —
Pricks His Ear — report to hear
Of that Vast Dark —
That swept His Being — back—

Grief is a Juggler — boldest at the Play —
Lest if He flinch — the eye that way
Pounce on His Bruises — One — say — or Three —
Grief is a Gourmand — spare His luxury —

Best Grief is Tongueless — before He’ll tell —
Burn Him in the Public Square —
His Ashes — will
Possibly — if they refuse — How then know —
Since a Rack couldn’t coax a syllable — now.

Emily tells me that grief snuggles down into my breast, cozy and warm, and eludes capture because it is so well hidden in the last place I would look for it—my heart.

Then grief is a thief, sneaky, furtive, taking life.  A criminal yes, but nothing in the face of that Vast Dark.  What is the thing that is more powerful than mere grief?  Despair!  Grief is dynamic, small.  Despair is boundless, implacable.  Grief juggles, light, moving this way and that, skips before my eyes.  When I think I’ve dodged grief, it is there again keeping all the balls in the air.  Keeping this experience moving, awake and in the air.  Always moving to stay current, relevant.  Grief never rests.  It is lively.

And Grief is a gourmand, who dines on me, always happy to be at my table.  It’s always a good time to chew on my peace.  Never let it be said that grief has no appetite for making a meal of the time before me.  It is all eaten up by Grief, that greedy dinner guest.

Best grief is tongueless, silent, won’t give up his secrets.  You can torture him on the rack and burn him at the stake.  Even his ashes will not speak for him.  Grief will not give up his reason for being. Grief does not explain or apologize.  There is nothing to hear from grief, anyway.  It has nothing to offer by way of wisdom.  Nothing useful.  Nothing so pat as understanding.

Grief is the constant companion, changing form from time to time, hiding and then reappearing, causing mischief, making a pig of himself.  He never goes away completely and we don’t know why Grief accompanies us in all these forms because Grief isn’t talking.  It is the thing beside or behind that we step along or back into without any reason, or explanation or name.

The nameless, voiceless grief comes and sits close, a weight on the heart.  Not depression.  That is a big fat stupid guy who smothers.  Grief is a slim sharp fellow, who knows exactly where to point, which sore portion of the flesh to dig into.  There.  That is the place of loss, right there.  Grief articulates beautifully without sound.  Only a gesture.

Right there is where something died.  Right there is where the lost dead thing fell away as you tried to catch it with both hands.  Where the baby slipped through your fingers.  Where the face you loved, closed and turned away.  Where the breath stopped.

Then grief will point to that place.  Relentless.  Grief never goes away.

Grief is tongueless because there isn’t anything to say.  No comfort.  How hollow.  There is only knowing what is always there—that absence.  No words can fill the empty space where something cherished used to be.

I’m listening to “For Emma, Forever Ago” (Bon Iver).  Today’s poem is #756, c. 1863.  Emily is in a queer mood.  By request, I render it whole here:

One Blessing had I than the rest
So larger to my Eyes
That I stopped gauging — satisfied—
For this enchanted size —

It was the limit of my Dream —
The focus of my Prayer—
A perfect — paralyzing Bliss —
Contented as Despair —

I knew no more of Want — or Cold —
Phantasms both become
For this new Value in the  Soul —
Supremest Earthly Sum—

The Heaven  below the Heaven above —
Obscured with ruddier Blue —
Life’s Latitudes leant over — full—
The Judgement perished — too —

Why Bliss so scantily disburse —
Why Paradise defer —
Why Floods be served to Us — in Bowls —
I speculate no more.

This poem makes me ask what could I have that would make me happy to be miserable.  I have not felt that way in many long years.  So in love that even the pain of conflict with the loved one is a pleasure somehow.  To know such complete bliss that even the misery is perfect.  So rich in my soul that I am happy to embrace it all.

We are led to believe that if something is painful, or some association gives us pain, we must eradicate this from our lives.  Because if it hurts, it must be bad.  I’m not going to argue with that.  Certainly a lot of toxic events, people, etc should be avoided because these are only destructive for all concerned.

Now Emily’s poem makes me ask what does it mean to have that “perfect paralyzing Bliss/Contented as despair”?  This is the line that gives me pause.  My wrinkled old brain doesn’t want to get around this.  But I have to take another pass at it.

This is the Blessing she says.  Not a joy, not a pleasure, but a blessing that surpasses all other blessings and is the limit of her dream, the focus of her prayer.  Also I note this blessing is not so simple as to know God’s love or a promise of heaven after.  For this blessing is “Heaven below” here on earth and obscures “Heaven above.”  The earthly blessing is greater than what God offers in the afterlife.

It is that opening of the soul, the depth and richness in her soul that allows for all that earthly existence may provide.  The paradox of the Bliss that leaves one paralyzed or a Despair that is contentment.  This is not masochism.  This is the complexity of being human.  Well, the complexity of being Emily.  To hold all that is possible in her soul at once without judgement or fear or anxious effort to replace, renew, retreat.  Simple being.

The second to last line:  “Why Floods be served to Us — in Bowls — I speculate no more.”  Have to admit this really strikes a chord in my New Orleans heart.  Em says, Do not sit and ask “Why?”  There is no answer to the question,”Why did Katrina fill up the bowl of our city with water?”  That question itself of “Why?” (and lack of an answer) breeds the misery, not the flood water.  The water drained out of the bowl a long time ago.  If we are still asking “why?” then we can’t blame Katrina or the federal government for our despair.  It is our own poor question.  There is no why.  There is only the complexity of holding all that we are at once without desire or judgment. Only contentment for what we are.

I woke from this dream early in the morning:  I am swimming in the ocean with my daughter.  (I don’t have an actual daughter; this was my dream daughter.) We rise and fall in the enormous, green cloudy swells of water.  I teach my daughter how to discipline the ocean so it will not overwhelm her.  We make a game of it.  We slap the surface of the water and shout, “Take that you great, big, brave, old ocean!”

Today’s poem is # 555, c. 1862

In the first line Emily advises, “Trust in the Unexpected.”  She goes on to explain that it was this trust that helped William Kidd find buried gold, the philosopher and his stone to discern what no one else could see.  It was trust in the unexpected that brought Columbus across the ocean where he “baptized America”.  And it was that trust that ultimately moved “Afflicted Thomas”, filled with doubt, to reach and perceive with his own hand what his rational mind would not allow—that Christ himself stood before him resurrected from the dead.

“Trust in the unexpected.”  I’m taking this personally.  There is so much that I don’t know that I don’t know.  For instance, I don’t know what lies on the other side  of this ocean of my day.  Furthermore I don’t know where lies the buried gold of my week or the summer in front of me.  I may have convinced myself that I know and let my arrogant mind leap ahead to the next hour or the next year.   This belief offers comfort.  If I know what to expect then I won’t be caught off guard.

(I wrote the above entry in my notebook this morning.  Then came back to it at the end of the day to complete the post, which continues below.)

I shared this poem with a friend today while were were picking blueberries.  She observed that the way to heal emotional trauma is to trust in the unexpected.  She meant that first you have to open your mind to the possibility of healing, which no one in the throes of painful memory wants to do or expects to do.  The way to that, she says, is simply to recognize what you don’t want.  Open space where that used to be.  And wait for that space to be filled with something you didn’t expect.  This friend (who is a therapist) believes that the mind will heal itself if given time and space and supportive awareness.  The human psyche wants to move toward wholeness.  It will move there in time if only we allow for that unexpected outcome.  It occurs to me that this process also depends on that “thing with feathers” . . . hope.  Emily, Emily everywhere.

I came home from blueberry picking, washed my hair, made basil pesto for dinner, drank a glass of wine.  Then I took Lance for a walk and something really unexpected happened.

Dusk was settling on Bayou Saint John.  The far corner of the sky had turned blood red. Lance and I walked along the water toward the Dumaine Street Bridge.  We saw a crowd of people and dogs gathered.  As we got closer, we saw a fellow sitting on the ground holding his dog’s leash taut.  On the other end of the leash was an alligator.  He guessed its size to be about three or four feet.  The guy had lassoed the alligator’s upper jaw and was holding it against the bank, while the alligator pulled against him, trying to escape back into the bayou.  Everyone was standing around watching, not knowing what to do.  Robert (the guy holding the leash) said he had asked someone to call the police, but so far New Orleans’ Finest had not showed up.

This alligator had been hanging around our bayou for some time now.  Photos had been circulating on the neighborhood association message board.  Everyone was in a tizzy (me especially) because alligators have been known to eat dogs who get too close to the water.  There was also the possibility that it would attack a child.  Lately there had been reports that our Bayou Saint John alligator had been coming onto land and nosing around in the grass before returning to the water.  I had just heard this story five minutes earlier from my neighbors Denny and Scharlette.  (Denny had named the alligator “Snappy”.)  “Oh this cannot continue,” I announced.  “Someone has to do something about this.”

When I arrived at the scene of capture, five minutes later, I told Robert that I happen to have the phone number of a guy known as “Gary-the-Trapper” who works with Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries.  Would Robert mind holding the alligator a few minutes longer, while I tried to get hold of Gary?  “Yeah.  Hurry,” said Robert.  So I ran home and dropped off Lance, grabbed my cell phone, and found the piece of paper with Gary’s number, right there on my desk underneath the x-ray of my broken ankle.  What are the chances, huh?  Also turns out Robert, the alligator-lasso-wrangler, has some rodeo experience roping steers.  What are the chances of that?  What are the chances of any these events and people arriving in the same place and the same time as our friend Snappy?

I caught Gary as he was coming off the Causeway Bridge on his way home from vacationing in the Ozarks.  He said he’d come right away.  He also wanted to know if Robert was going to stay there with the alligator.  Gary didn’t want to make an unnecessary trip, if we were not committed to our end of this project.   I asked Robert if he would really, truly stay and hold the alligator in place until Gary could get there.  “YES!” he yelled.  His dog Ramona, a gentle giant of a Great Dane, was fascinated by this new animal.  She knelt beside Robert and rubbed her head in the grass and rolled closer to the alligator, who appeared to be sleeping.   “Mona get back!” Robert cried.  “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

I asked Robert, when he had decided to drop the leash onto the alligator’s jaw, what had been his plan.  What was he going to do with the alligator once he caught it?  “Plan?” he said.  “Um, I didn’t really have a plan.”

When Gary-the-Trapper got there, he told us that we were a bunch of idiots for standing so close to the alligator.  It was much bigger than we thought at first.  And it could easily have charged onto the bank and attacked one of us.  Robert would have been the most vulnerable.  (One woman had been leaning over the alligator and murmuring, “Poor little bunny.”)  As he wrapped duct tape around the alligator’s jaw (yet, another use for duct tape!) Gary described in baroque detail how it would have latched onto our limbs and worked its teeth, razoring back and forth, severing the tendons. “You’d have eight months of surgeries, and then lose your arm anyway.”  Gary lifted the cuff of his pants to show us the scar where a ten-footer had tried to remove his leg.  He has an artificial knee now.  “Aren’t you afraid of alligators, since then?” I asked.  Gary shrugged.  “It’s a job.”

Gary promised that he would not kill the alligator but relocate it to a Wildlife Management Area in Lake Salvador.  Someone wanted to know if this was a boy alligator or a girl alligator.  Gary flipped it over to show the pale plated armor underneath, and gave us a lesson in how to sex an alligator.  Turns out that both male and female genitalia are hidden from view on alligators.  One must find the little pocket opening on the underside of the tail at the base.  Gary pried this open, peeked inside (he looked somewhat embarrassed), quickly restored the alligator’s private parts to their secret compartment, and announced  . . . we had a girl!   

I changed the alligator’s name to Esmeralda.  Snappy isn’t right for a girl.

Esmeralda writhed in the grass.  Earlier when Robert had her on the leash, she had simply dragged her weight (about 80 pounds) against him, as though waiting for him to get bored and give up.  She seemed to know we’d be dumbfounded by her and would have no other option but to release her.  Esmeralda hadn’t counted on Gary-the-Trapper.  Now that her situation had grown grave, she fought like hell, or as well as she could with her forelimbs tied  behind her back and her jaw duct taped shut.  She was helpless and furious.  Her tail thrashed as Gary tried to measure her length.  (He patted her plump gut; she had grown fat on nutria.)  She would not cooperate with any of this intrusion.  Gary showed us where another alligator had taken off a portion of her tail.  She would have been six-feet in length were it not for this trauma.  Poor Esmeralda.  I hope she finds peace and food in Lake Salvador.

I certainly did not expect to meet an alligator when I read Emily’s poem this morning. But I trust that Emily knew everything all along.  In fact, I believe she sent me the poem and the alligator as a lesson:  Loosen the weave.  Allow.  Respond.  

There was something in the air among us as we stood on the bank of Bayou Saint John and waited with our alligator.  Before we knew how dangerous she was and how stupid we were to stand there with her, there was a definite charge in the air.  I’ll call it joy.  Exhileration.  How often do we get to see a creature such as this, here in our midst, a deep dwelling thing that lives in the murk and has come to us in our above-the-water world?  We should have been afraid.  Instead, in our innocence, we became more alive and awake.  And happy for this visit.  Why?  Because it was strange.  Unexpected.

Thank you Esmeralda, and thank you Emily.