one of my favorites

Have I posted my favorite poem before?  Well, here it is.  I was thinking about it last night as I reflected on my life and how much reason I have to be grateful.

WEDDING TOAST

St. John tells how, at Cana’s wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That this world’s fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.

Now, if your loves will lend an ear to mine,
I toast you both, good son and dear new daughter.
May you not lack for water,
And may that water smack of Cana’s wine.

~ Richard Wilbur, born 1921, American poet and translator, and U. S. Poet Laureate, 1987-1988

Mud

Barren soul-desert,
neglected, parched
scabby heart
clean, dry cracks of once-mud


somehow, flowers:
still sun-hungry,
persistent roots
in search of Water


I pick up my shovel - 
the work is refreshing.


Only now
comes the sound of Rain.

miscellaneous

I've written that word on a lot of boxes in the past few days.  My family is moving from the Bay Area back to Provo, and that means dawn-till-dusk packing this week with my Mom and Dad.  (Ben and Joe are at scout camp and Coby mostly reads a book about Greek Myths.)  It's fun, hard work, with lots of built-in nostalgia.  I found all my old journals in my bedroom and got a kick out of flipping through.  My mom unearthed an awesome and nonsensical story my little brothers and I had written three summers ago, each of us adding a word at a time, as well as a gorgeous poem she wrote soon after we arrived in Livermore.  She's a brilliant poet, if you didn't know.  Maybe I'll type up those treasures in a later post.

I've been thinking about this time of year, four years ago, when we made the reverse move, from Utah to CA.  It seems like a lifetime ago.  I was about to enter my Junior year of high school.  For me, the move represented very tangibly a transition we all experience: leaving behind the happy, safe world of childhood.  Life becomes harder-darker-scarier, more complicated, less carefree.

And, I optimistically maintain, more beautiful.  Difficulty, while it makes living less comfortable, makes it more meaningful.  The contrast gained from "opposition in all things" makes the light brighter, or at least more recognizable or more significant.  I have a lot of my heart tied up in this concept, but I don't have the time or the desire to pick apart my heart right now.  Plus, there are bathrooms that need to be boxed up.

P.S.   Guess how many boxes it took to pack up the kitchen?  Twenty five!  Twenty Five!!!

Beautiful Family

I could make a pretty deep Venn-diagram for the two sides of my family.  It would have a lot written in each part.  The two sides of my family share so many things: both are big but tight-knit.  Both love to have fun.  I come right in the middle of the cousin line-up on both sides.  Both have strong family cultures formed by strong, bright parents (who are my grandparents), and carried on by more strong, bright parents (my aunts, uncles, and my mom and dad), and instilled in more strong, bright people (my cousins, from the ones who are starting their own gorgeous little families to the ones who are being potty-trained). 
Family is such a beautiful thing.  And when I say strong, and bright, I mean it.  I am surrounded by people who are strong.  They don't have easy-breezy lives but they live with such tenacity, such strength for each other.  This week, at the family reunion for my mom's side of the family, I have felt keenly the silver threads that connect us -- connect us to one another and to the other side of the veil. 
And I have felt these people's brightness.  Both sides of my family, in fact, are loaded with people who are extremely smart.  But even more significantly, they are light-bright.  They have the shining power of faith and love and hope in their lives. It's such an exquisite thing to be a part of.
It feels unfair -- why do I get such light-filled, happy nests of love to be raised in, while there are so many who don't?  It is something I don't understand - makes my heart hurt - but I do know that I am inexpressibly grateful for my families, and that I believe in families.  So much, that makes my heart hurt too.

Sea of Green

I went into the middle of a field yesterday.  I don't know if I've ever been in such an open space in my life.  You know how some people have a phobia of open spaces?  They would have been terrified. 
I was on this country road and I realized that the barbed-wire fence along the road had ended and there was just this big ol' mass of green vastness there for the taking.  So I timidly took a few steps out into it.  Once I started it kept pulling me in.  Soon I had run/interpretive danced into the middle of it all, with the wind blowing ripples through the blades all around.  It really does feel kind of like being out far into the ocean.
I swam my way to a fence on the other side, next to which there was this old roadster buggy-thing all rusted and forgotten.  It was cool.  The sun was getting close to the western horizon, so I hurried back through the field to the road to the car to home.  To my relief, the whole experience didn't even leave me with a tick.
Oh!  And, on my way back to the car I noticed some friendly Black-Eyed Susans, which I took home with me and put in a vase in the kitchen.  

Live and Laugh

I think it was my dad who taught me to laugh at myself.  I am convinced that this skill is absolutely essential. 
This morning I was remembering a particularly embarrassing experience from a month or so ago.  You know how sometimes those memories fling themselves at you without warning?  It's amazing to me how much of a reaction is produced from a simple memory, but there I was, cringing inside. 
I found myself laughing.  Here I am, weeks later, and there's not a thing I can do about my month-old tactlessness.  But I can laugh.  I can log away whatever information might be helpful in the future, spread out my arms and let out a full-breathed laugh to the Montana sky while I squelch through the mud in my running shoes.

Fortunate Rediscovery

You know how sometimes you forget about something and rediscover it later?  Like a cute pair of shoes that was buried in the back of your closet, or a favorite recipe you haven't made in a while?  In church two days ago someone quoted a talk by Elder Uchtdorf.  I had forgotten about the talk, but it's one of my favorites.  Reading it was like talking to an old friend.  It's about the Love of God.  Read it, if you want.  Here.