Clarity

So much happens here. A lion walked through the canyon today. A train rumbled by at six, followed by a chorus of coyotes. There were tangles of kelp on the beach, and tumbles of rock, and distant boats at sea, and tiny white butterflies danced about the lavender. A bull fell to his death from a cliff, and oranges dropped to the ground, and a young girl named Jasmine unloaded produce from a truck while low clouds hazed the late day light and cast a crown of beams about her yellow hair. I thought about my dear friend Greg, newly vanished, and how astonishing it was to have known him. I thought about my new grandson Felix, whose miraculous existence fills my heart with joy, and I thought about the banquet that is my life.

It is impossible to go through this pandemic without some soul-searching or contemplation, either focusing on what is near, or trying to fix a point on the horizon.

Today in particular there was a certain clarity in the very air, a thin kind of light that lifted me, and I was filled with wonder, wonder that outweighed the sadness and the dread. I don’t know why I am so lucky, but here I still stand.

And I dreamed last night of a view through a window, layers of warm color, sunlight on the painted stone of old buildings, a sense of certainty that I was exactly where I should be. I know secrets. I cannot speak them in words.

I began as a girl with stars in her eyes. Then I was a vessel, forgiven and indulged, into whom love and second chances were poured again and again. My luck was good, no credit to me, and I kept on going, and over the years I became someone else, someone more akin to the starry-eyed girl.

Now we are asked to stay put, and to know ourselves again, and one another.

In the evening, I walked high up the grassy hill and looked down upon my own house. An amber light shone in the window.

This poem by Derek Walcott (1930-2017) is my song for today.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.