“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”
- Hemingway
Monday, May 21, 2012
/// SO PERFECT THEY COULD MAKE YOU CRY
"Gratitude"
Barbara Crooker
This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war
grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer,
or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of
for twenty or thirty miserable years—
And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man
with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times
have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines
through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves
as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree
that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow:
cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings,
and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up,
so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers,
Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world
sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s
sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock—
And at least today, all the parts of my body are working,
the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves murmur their leafy chatter,
finches percolate along. I’m doodling around this page,
know sorrow’s somewhere beyond the horizon, but still, I’m riffing
on the warm air, the wingbeats of my lungs that can take this all in,
flush the heart’s red peony, then send it back without effort or thought.
And the trees breathe in what we exhale, clap their green hands
in gratitude, bend to the sky.
///
There was a time in my life not so long ago, that everything was perfect it could make me cry in a second just remembering it. It could even make me cry then, as it was happening, because I was aware that THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE HAPPIEST I'VE EVER BEEN. And I found myself wishing could you please,
please make this last forever.
And the days, and months, and years pass by gradually and then it's gone, you're no longer there. And a big fear lingers in my heart (always there) that it can never happen again.
But I have to believe and I have to go on and I have to tell myself it is always now and yet to come, because what else is there? You can't live IN a moment.
But today, at least all my body parts are working, and somehow in my heart I still know that there is a place. A place where happiness past, present, future exists. And I just have to go on. It could be perfect again. Please,
please let it happen again.
Barbara Crooker
This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war
grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer,
or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of
for twenty or thirty miserable years—
And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man
with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times
have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines
through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves
as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree
that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow:
cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings,
and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up,
so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers,
Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world
sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s
sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock—
And at least today, all the parts of my body are working,
the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves murmur their leafy chatter,
finches percolate along. I’m doodling around this page,
know sorrow’s somewhere beyond the horizon, but still, I’m riffing
on the warm air, the wingbeats of my lungs that can take this all in,
flush the heart’s red peony, then send it back without effort or thought.
And the trees breathe in what we exhale, clap their green hands
in gratitude, bend to the sky.
///
There was a time in my life not so long ago, that everything was perfect it could make me cry in a second just remembering it. It could even make me cry then, as it was happening, because I was aware that THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE HAPPIEST I'VE EVER BEEN. And I found myself wishing could you please,
please make this last forever.
And the days, and months, and years pass by gradually and then it's gone, you're no longer there. And a big fear lingers in my heart (always there) that it can never happen again.
But I have to believe and I have to go on and I have to tell myself it is always now and yet to come, because what else is there? You can't live IN a moment.
But today, at least all my body parts are working, and somehow in my heart I still know that there is a place. A place where happiness past, present, future exists. And I just have to go on. It could be perfect again. Please,
please let it happen again.
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