My experience with strict stay-at-home orders for the past eight months hasn’t been as difficult as I’d have thought. Each day moves quickly, bolstering my belief that time is an illusion.
I last left you in March with the information that my daughter, Aimee, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and since that announcement she’s been undergoing an aggressive treatment plan. In non-Covid times this would be challenging. Anyone currently navigating complex medical appointments deserves a merit badge.
I’ve learned a lot from being on the receiving end of friends with the gift of communicating compassion and support beyond anything I expected. Aimee is doing well, so it follows, as her mom, I am, too.
At different times in my life poetry has been important to me, and this poem, written by a favorite poet, Stanley Kunitz, is today’s offering. If he speaks to you, I’d love to hear.
If this isn’t for you today, you never know. Maybe another time.
The Layers
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
