To speak of a visit to heaven and to know that what is said is neither heard nor comprehended carries its own sense of loneliness. To know that what you know will forever only be yours, can only ever be yours is a form of torture. So when I walk the storefronts a little slower than I could and I visit the museum a little more than I should and every Tuesday I drink my coffee with two cups, well, I’ve learned to stop trying to explain.
It has been more than forty years now. My memory is not what it was, or perhaps I should say, my memory of recent events, of the last decade or so, seems fuzzy and often I have to remind myself of what I did last week or even of yesterday. The memory of that winter, of the snow and the mud, of the men and their wool, where everything was green and brown, red and white, however, remains as sharp as a dream upon waking. We had but a couple days. And yet, how can I not say he has lived within me these forty some odd years, has shaped my life and all that I know by those few hours he held me, looked upon me and whispered just a handful of words. And I think, how is this possible?
When I go into town, every Tuesday, my heart aches of past and present not by memory of what was as much as the echoing hollowness within me brought by little feet and little hands at play with smiles and laughter. I have no little feet in my life. Neither did he. And I think, how could that be? How could a loving God not grant to us what surely he must wish upon all creation, of life born in the light of love. Yet I sit and I know, he did not. My knees no longer ache from kneeling as a heart no longer bleeds from having bled out. A part of me died with Virgil that cold December day in France. The rest of me, well, it has died a slower death, one without end, one summoned to the block with little feet and little hands, every Tuesday, as I sit with my cup and his.
4 comments:
Image taken from the front of a M.I.L.K. card. Look for them in your local bookstore.
Poppet, I saw on FB that there was a Mary post, and I wanted to be able to come here on a morning, thus I arrive only today - for the delay, I am sorry, but not for waiting. For 5 years, I've been coming here and everytime is a cotnradition were one to attempt to explain, on the one hand it is the same, on the other it is new, different each time - the force, the overwhelming beauty of your writing though it differs within its own centile, it shoots a curve far and above. Each and every time. And the fact that it does, though I have learned this is what you do, never ceases to amaze me. The question arises and is immediately quashed, not how can it be, but it just is. Heaven's gift.
I am absolutely enthralled by how can I not say he has lived within me these forty some odd years, has shaped my life and all that I know by those few hours he held me, looked upon me and whispered just a handful of words.
tbc
I've never seen this, written in this way, how does one say... there is a beauty to the phrasing, to the poetry that has moulded itself to perception like silk on skin...it is the simplicity, the sincerity as it pleats with the recognition of how memory works, of how love moves and remains, that catches ones breath and lends a momentary weakness in the presense of such beauty.
I don't think there was ever a greater character created. The potential is staggering. The endless opposites, in eternal balance, fused and twirling and infinite. Everything.
My dear Autumn, your comments are singular works of beauty. I've watched, with great pleasure as your own skill with word has blossomed as if post and comment were a dance of two, each knowing the other as partners aged in years and known without speaking. You have graced my heart for six years or so and a finer gift I've not been given. Thank you.
xoxo
Poppet
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