Earth and Heaven

Mmmmm. Browsing poetry on the net. Have to love it, even when it tears at my heart.

I talked to an old friend this afternoon, my oldest friend really. We go all the way back to high school. Her teenaged daughter, my goddaughter, wants to be a writer. My friend and I have drifted now, but we maintain the ties we still have out of respect for how close we once were. When her child was born, she was like my own for several years. I loved her with a ferocious intensity that never tired.

My friend jokes that J takes after me. "You influenced her in those crucial years of early development," she claims.

I laugh. Then I offer this advice that I mean quite seriously. I've heard it from other writers, and it rang true. If it is at all possible for her to do anything else she should, I tell my friend. If your daughter can leave writing behind, if she can be happy with any other tasks, she'll live a happier life. Writing is amazing. Writing is a lover that lingers with us always. But writing, while it can lift us to heights and depths that we only imagine, is not kind.

I told you I'd been reading poetry. Via Negativa is an extraordinary site. I lifted the following straight from Fiona's blog (Hope she won't mind!):

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

-Robert Bly


What do I want? I ask myself.

I want love, most of all. I want compassion, both given and received. I want enlightenment. I want security. I want connection, attachment of the positive kind, happiness for those I love. I want to make a difference and to help others all around me. I want friendship upon friendship, showers of friendship shooting from the sky like silvered falling stars. I want forgiveness and redemption, reconciliation and starting again. I want passion and truth. I want not satisfaction, but contentment, like the wise heron.

Hope and Faith I fortunately and inexplicably have in spades. I have enough of that to spare.

If I could sit on Santa's velveted lap and have his kindly gaze turn upon me, these are the things I would ask for. Not diamonds, not a shiny car, not even guaranteed-return market investments.

I would ask for these intangibles. I am asking for these. I'm human, with opposable thumbs, and this is the list of what I want.