a compilation poem for my sister

My sister is the loveliest, the thoughtful-est, the hardest working, etc.

I love you, Des.

(but first, cake)

How beautiful was her birthday cake?!

 

//

A COMPILATION POEM

for Destiny, in your fortieth year

2023

1

There are years that question and years that answer.

 

2

We must be gleaners from what life has set before us.

 

3

The truth is that every life ends. The quality of a life is defined not by its length, but by its depth. It is defined by our ability to love.

 

4

Further years on earth, should I be so lucky as to be blessed with them, will bring further shedding of everything that doesn't matter, & never really did.

 

5

The heart of it all.

 

6

She was tying together who she'd been in the first half of her life with the person she had become; stitching her life & heart together.

 

7

She was a masterpiece of human life.

 

8

She could hear the ferries blowing their mournful horns, 

could hear birdsong, and felt sweet contentment.

 

9

She began to radiate an inner illumination that would not be denied.

 

10

In her world, nothing was rushed. 

Not love, grief, joy, or a pot on the stove.

 

11

You will never be able to escape from your heart, 

so it's better to listen to what it has to say .

 

 

12

I give you your faults.

 

13

Progress ebbs & flows. When one problem is taken care of, another one crops up. Sometimes there is no solution, so we learn to live a new way.

 

14

That's life in a nutshell, ain't it. 

Lovin' to go to one place and havin’ to go to another.

 

15

I want them to remember that their mother was happy, not that she had dinner on the table at six every night, or that bedtime was always at eight. I want them to remember all the things we did, not the things we weren't able to do.

 

16

I was remembering how to be just me. 

I was unfolding, learning to take up space.

 

17

I feel desperate for some unadulterated beauty in my life.

 

18

I'm letting time work its magic.

 

19

It's important to find poetry where we can.

 

20

When I have been truly searching for my treasure, 

every day has been luminous.

 

21

People rebuild their lives all the time; we are destined to have to re-make our lives at least one or twice in a lifetime.

 

22

This is what being alive looks like right now.

 

23

Emotions are like a passing storm.

 

24

Life is motion, change, stagnation, bloom. Nothing ever seems to happen, or awful stuff happens, or beautiful stuff happens. And we say, Amen.

 

25

A good story is earned in the middle, 

in that sacred space of becoming.

 

26

Middles are a problem. 

Middles are perhaps the major problem of contemporary life.

 

27

We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside... marriages are nesting dolls, too. Somewhere at the centre is the tiniest doll, Love.

 

28

I could hear the clock of his heart right under my ear. 

If there's a better way to keep time, I don't know it.

 

29

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be any happier in the completely pristine version of my life than I am in its semi-messy present.

 

30

I kept going because I wanted to know how one puts one's life together again; making up the bits and remnants into a new whole. I wanted to know how to carry love forward in the tiniest of gestures.

 

31

Intermittency - an impossible lesson for human beings to learn. How can one learn to live through the tides of one's existence?

 

32

If there's pleasure in action, there's peace in stillness.

 

33

The light in the room was beautiful this morning ~ I used to walk over before sunrise just to sit there, & watch the light come into that room.

 

34

I sobbed and I sobbed, and then I laughed and laughed.

I added a few more years to my life.

 

35

Much more prayer is called for, clearly, 

but first, I will take a nap.

 

36

Hope is choosing to believe this one thing - that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.

 

37

Daisies with bright yellow hearts.

 

38

Reading for the pleasure and expansion of your soul.

 

39

Trying to be a good mother, trying to be a good person, trying to be a good wife, trying to do good work, trying to be a healthy-ish forty something human, all at the same time, is a long march toward inevitable daily failure. There are fights to never stop fighting, and there are fights to surrender.

 

40

This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, 

of work, of details, of intimacy, even of communication – 

one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, 

pouring into one like a fresh tide.

//

Sources

 

1 / Zora Neal Hurston

2 / Elizabeth Alexander

3 / Ann Patchett

4 / Jessi Klein, I’ll Show Myself Out

5 / Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

6 / Ann Patchett (of Grace Paley)

7 / Maggie Smith, You Could Make this Place Beautiful

8 / Jenny Jackson, Pineapple Street

9 / Amor Towles, the Lincoln Highway

10 / Tembi Locke, From Scratch

11 / Paulo Coelho, the Alchemist

12 / Madeleine L’Engle, a Wrinkle in Time

13 / Risen Motherhood

14 / Amor Towles, the Lincoln Highway

15 / Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

16 / Maggie Smith, (above)

17 / Jessi Klein, I’ll Show Myself Out

18 / Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

19 / Jessi Klein, I’ll Show Myself Out

20 / Paulo Coelho, the Alchemist

21 / Tembi Locke, From Scratch

22 / Anne Lamott, Small Victories

23 / Amy Poehler, Yes Please

24 / Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow

25 / Joanna Gaines, the Stories We Tell

26 / Nora Ephron, Heartburn

27 / Maggie Smith, You Could Make this Place Beautiful

28 / Maggie Smith, (above)

29 / Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

30 / Tembi Locke, From Scratch

31 / Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

32 / Emily St John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

33 / Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

34 / Amy Poehler, Yes Please

35 / Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

36 / Anne Lamott, Small Victories

37 / Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

38 / Jessi Klein, I’ll Show Myself Out

39 / Jessi Klein, (above)

40 / Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea