What Did You Think?
There was a lot going on yesterday: getting set up with an editing “gig” for a very cool upcoming dharma book, listening to the good news from a very dear friend whose husband does NOT have bladder cancer after all, talking with a mentor about how to respond to a toxic situation, and spending a tender evening at the home of that previously mentioned former-suitor and his current wife, a long-out-of-touch book-club friend. So no time for posting yesterday.
Instead, I offer this, from West Wind by Mary Oliver:
And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders? On one street after another, the litter ticks in the gutter. In one room after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out. One or two leap from windows. Most simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill. They have done all that they could. The golden eagle, that lives not far from here, has perhaps a thousand tiny feathers flowing from the back of its head, each one shaped like an infinitely small but perfect spear.