Another poem

Yesterday morning, I read this post at Segullah. It knocked me over.

The whole post is beautiful, so read it, but the poem...oh, the poem...

So here it is. (And I promise that my next few posts will be less heavy. My life is full of light and fun and spring rebirth and music and teenagers rolling their eyes at me and so much laughing...it's not all philosophy and pain. Really, it's not.)

A Brief for the Defense

by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Piano Lessons

I'm back at the piano again, (maybe) in earnest this time, and having an enormously good time reading and reading and reading. I think I'll have an enormously good time once I settle down on repertoire, too, but it's kind of the difference between dating and getting engaged...when you're dating a piece, you can be all superficial, love the big picture and ignore the problem spots. Once you're engaged/married, you see every little quirky detail and recognize that it's now your responsibility to overcome every challenge. It's great, that kind of hard work, totally great, but sometimes it's nice to go back to the crush stage.


So I'm crushing on some Prokofiev (I'd like to commit to the 7th Sonata, but my goal right now is to stay with smaller pieces, so I'm sticking with The Montagues and the Capulets), the Haydn Fantasie, and I can't decide which of the 20 Scarlatti sonatas I've gone through is really going to hold my fancy. I think I will revisit the 4th Ballade because it deserves to get to the next level.


I'm also planning some fun collaborative work for the near future, and am so excited to play gorgeous music with some wonderful musicians.


Spending so many hours a day working with students or at the piano itself is a little exhilarating. I'm so lucky that this is my life.


I love this Billy Collins poem. So much of his poetry wraps the mundane in the cloth of art. It makes me look more carefully at the details of my life.


It's so much fun to admit that (once again) "even when I am not playing, I think about the piano."


Piano Lessons
By Billy Collins

1.
My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back
off to the side of the piano.
I sit up straight on the stool.
He begins by telling me that every key
is like a different room
and I am a blind man who must learn
to walk through all twelve of them
without hitting the furniture.
I feel myself reach for the first doorknob.

2.
He tells me that every scale has a shape
and I have to learn how to hold
each one in my hands.
At home I practice with my eyes closed.
C is an open book.
D is a vase with two handles.
G flat is a black boot.
E has the legs of a bird.

3.
He says the scale is the mother of the chords.
I can see her pacing the bedroom floor
waiting for her children to come home.
They are out at nightclubs shading and lighting
all the songs while couples dance slowly
or stare at one another across tables.
This is the way it must be. After all,
just the right chord can bring you to tears
but no one listens to the scales,
no one listens to their mother.

4.
I am doing my scales,
the familiar anthems of childhood.
My fingers climb the ladder of notes
and come back down without turning around.
Anyone walking under this open window
would picture a girl of about ten
sitting at the keyboard with perfect posture,
not me slumped over in my bathrobe, disheveled,
like a white Horace Silver.

5.
I am learning to play
“It Might As Well Be Spring”
but my left hand would rather be jingling
the change in the darkness of my pocket
or taking a nap on an armrest.
I have to drag him in to the music
like a difficult and neglected child.
This is the revenge of the one who never gets
to hold the pen or wave good-bye,
and now, who never gets to play the melody.

6.
Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano.
It is the largest, heaviest,
and most beautiful object in this house.
I pause in the doorway just to take it all in.
And late at night I picture it downstairs,
this hallucination standing on three legs,
this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile.

The Journey

Mary Oliver




One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.



I love this poem.  It describes my life right now so beautifully.  And I must clarify: All those voices, the ones with the bad advice, the ones trying to pull my from my path...they are the voices of fear, of inadequacy, the voice of the adversary.  My family, on the other hand?  Their voices are saying, "You can do this," or  "I love listening to you practice," or "How many more hours do you need to do tonight?"  They're pulling out my coat and packing me food for the road.  They are magnificent.

The road is steep and rugged and challenging, but it's beautiful and exhilarating.

My Shoreline Trail

When I am among the trees,
Especially the willows and the honey locust,
Equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
They give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
In which I have goodness, and discernment,
And never hurry through the world
But walk slowly, and often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
And call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
Into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
With light, and to shine."

Mary Oliver

I just found this poem. Well, I guess it found me. "To go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine." Why is it so so hard "to go easy?" Why are so many many of my days filled with small and large struggles? How do I find the grace to go easy?

Moving here was hard for me. IS hard for me. My birthday was a couple of weeks after the move and it was a bad day. Just plain bad. I was a basket case for oh, so many reasons. And in the middle of my wallowing, this thought came to me: "Get thee up to the mountain." I had been wanting to find the North Salt Lake portion of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail since the move and had even driven around looking for the trailhead, but had had no luck. And somehow, on my birthday, I knew I was supposed to find that trail. But I couldn't get space in my day to get there. I couldn't find space in my head to get there.

But the next day, there it was again: "Get thee up to the mountain." The day was, if possible, even worse. My head was spinning with frustration and a little bit of rage. Two of my kids were still sick at home for the second week straight. And I was going to have my nephews and nieces to stay the night, and my brother Chad was coming to hang out, and I didn't know how to get out of my bad state. So I decided that I'd listen to the prompting and do my best to force enjoyment of the gorgeous fall day we had. Also, two two-year-olds do better outdoors than cooped up indoors. So I looked online for directions to the trail and off we went.

And when we had walked less than a quarter mile on the trail, all of the crap rolling around in my head just disappeared. No lie. It just left. And I found myself laughing and looking forward to life for the first time since the move. I started seeing years ahead of my family with the trail for company, with walks and hikes and snowshoeing and photography and memories. It was like hope had been restored, and I knew that I'd been given grace. Pure grace.

The little boys threw rocks and played with mud. Chad, Kate, and Josh walked on into the yellowing grass. And then President Uchtdorf walked by and commented on what a beautiful day it was. (Josh was excited to discover when we returned to the trailhead that President Uchtdorf drives an Audi.) And we were all happy.

I returned the next morning for a long run. I decided to trail run the hills, and they were STEEP. But as I hit the last crest, the MOMENT I hit the last crest, the sun rose over the peak and shone directly on me. It was another moment of pure grace, and the spirit told me that God is mindful of me, that he loves me and wants me to be happy, and that I will be happy on the trail.

And I have been. It saves me, and near daily. It has become a holy place for me. While I'm there, I'm reminded that “It’s simple,...and (I) too have come Into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine."

If only I could carry that knowledge with me during the rest of my day. I'm working on it...

Life Has Loveliness to Sell

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstacy
Give all you have been, or could be.

-Sara Teasdale

I love this poem, with its gentle reminder that loveliness is found in large and simple things. I have found that loveliness in Ben's pats on my back, in finding the right low leaping left hand octaves, in hearing the Spirit and listening. It is in my dog resting her head on my knee when I'm feeling especially low, in David's sweet text messages, in my childrens' faces in candlelight. It is in reconnecting with those I hold dear, in running at dawn, in finding my pillow at the end of an everlong day.

Life has loveliness to sell. Find it. Recognize it. Buy it.