(edited while listening to “Strange Currencies” by R.E.M.)
Sometimes, living in this world—this time –it feels as if we drift further and further away from all the things that once mattered: faith, ideas, family, hope, God, and even love itself. These are reckless times, wicked times, malignant times, uncertain times, solitary times. Modern times, as Dylan would say. And sometimes it seems as if we are fated to make our way through the darkness, with nothing left to light our way.
Last night I gave a book of poetry to my son. It was an old textbook, really, bought for pennies at a library sale a long, long time ago. But this is the book that taught me to love poetry, to hear the music in carefully selected words. And as I handed it to him, a letter floated to the floor, a letter that I had lost and believed I would never see again.
I’m really resting up some. It feels so good not to go to work. I’m really getting my thoughts together…wait for me to come back.
These times…these days. There are still connections if we are lucky enough to find them: to the past, to each other, to memories that we no longer knew we had. And to think that I’m writing now simply because I’m listening to These Four Walls by Shawn Colvin, and seeing connections to other music that I barely knew even existed.
It still hasn’t snowed in a lifetime
And I am still frozen in time
Where did you come from
How could you leave
And why can’t you be mine?
Holding on. It’s all we ever do, knowing all the while that love and time are slipping through our hands. Shawn Colvin understands how it feels. How it feels to be lonely inside these four walls.
I really can’t say when I’ll be home, just that it won’t be much longer. Please just hold on to me. Please.
I wrote poems for her, poems that she probably lost or discarded a long time ago. I don’t want to know. I wrote them for her. I gave them to her. And that is all.
I’m really glad you love me enough to let me go away for a while. You go and see my family and keep me up on everything. I wish you could come down so we could go back together.
June, half a lifetime ago. Tears at a bus station in a city I barely knew then, tears for a girl who would never really come back. Tears for a girl already lost, the kind of tears you carry with you for the rest of your life.
Talk in everlasting words
And dedicate them all to me
And I will give you all my life
I’m here if you should call to me
You think that I don’t even mean
A single word I say
It’s only words and words are all I have
To take your heart away
