Lesson no. 1

Lesson no. 1

This year has bought to me many challenges in which I have had to learn deeply and honestly about myself and my interactions with the world. Throughout these past days, stretching back to new years day there have been some words of common goals from unknown faces, stories, sage scented advice and pointers that have helped me along the way. I have gone back to these 'lessons' over and over this year to bring me back to reality and to my own motivations for how I wish to take ownership on my life. This poem by Marge Piercy was the first of the lessons.


To Have Without Holding.

Learning to love differently is hard,
Love with hands wide open, love
With doors banging on there hinges,
The cupboard unlocked, the wind
Roaring and whimpering in the rooms
Rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
That twack like rubber bands
In an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
Stretching the muscles that feel
As if they are made of wet plaser,
Then of blunt knives, then
Of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
Of grab, of clutch; to love and let
Go again and again. It pesters to remember
The lover who is not in bed,
To hold back what is owed to the work
That gutters like a candle in a cave
Without air, to love consciously,
Conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say its killing
Me but you thrive, you glow
On the street like a neon raspberry
You float and sail, a helium baloon,
Bright bachelors button blue and bobbing.

On the hot and cold winds of our breath,
As we make and unmake in passionate
Diastole and systole the rhythm
Of our unbound bounding, to have
And not to hold, to love
with minimised malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.