Raving Heart

Dear friend,

Only a short note. There is another coming and soon.

Yesterday a new friend and a newer friend and I came together for a long, cool conversation. Somewhere along the way, and I hope neither noticed, I drifted away to another day and imagined them, just the two of them talking in this very same place. Not in hushed tones, but in the same highs and lows in which they spoke yesterday. Speaking of me or not-speaking of me.

It didn’t matter a single breath. I was nearly overcome by the beauty of the thought.

And then I went to another day in this very same place and it was two again: me and one of them, then me and the other. It was too much and l wanted to leave quickly and to slam the door behind me, but I could not.

Until one of them brought me back with this:

“Design a new t-shirt,” he said. “Instead of Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body, how would you finish this?”:

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This morning I woke and came down for coffee, as I always do. Next to the coffee pot, I found an envelope on which Kathryn had written, My Beloved. This was inside:

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Too long for a t-shirt, I know. But I trust the poets more fully than mad-men.

So if I had to fit an answer on a shirt, it might be this:

Pain is….

… a pretty song

… a raving heart

It would never sell, but maybe.

Oremus,

C

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A Pretty Song
Mary Oliver

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

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