Pause

Right now I am sitting in my studio, a make-shift studio in a small workshop attached to the garage with three windows that face the yard, a rough dirty counter with jars of screws, nuts and bolts hanging from a ledge, a printer on the floor, and shelves of books behind. The sun set and the night air, clear with tiny stars, is cold.

I have been reading Galway Kinnell tonight am struck by this poem, by the reminder of daily music, of waiting through a time, or grief blooming out:

Wait

Wait, for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.

But trust the hours. Haven’t they

carried you everywhere, up to now?

Personal events will become interesting again.

Hair will become interesting.

Pain will become interesting.

Buds that open out of season will become interesting.

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;

their memories are what give them

the need for other hands. The desolation

of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness

carved out of such tiny beings as we are

asks to be filled; the need

for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.

Don’t go too early.

You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.

But no one is tired enough.

Only wait a little and listen:

music of hair,

music of pain,

music of looms weaving our loves again.

Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,

most of all to hear your whole existence,

rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.