On Healing
— Nayyirah Waheed
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
— Adrienne Rich, from Diving into the Wreck
— Mary Oliver
Every day when I pick up my four-year-old daughter from preschool she climbs into her back booster seat and says, Mom—–tell me your story. And almost every day I tell her: I dropped you off, I taught my class I ate a tuna fish sandwich, wrote e-mails, returned phone calls, talked with students and then I came to pick you up. And almost every day I think, My God, is that what I did? Yesterday, she climbed into the backseat and said, Mom tell me your story, and I did what I always did: I said I dropped you off taught my class, had lunch, returned e-mails, talked with students… And she said, No Mom, tell me the whole thing. And I said, ok. I feel a little sad. And she said, Tell me the whole thing Mom. And I said, ok Elise died. Elise is dead and the world feels weary and brokenhearted. And she said, Tell me the whole thing Mom. And I said, in my dream last night I felt my life building up around me and when I stepped forward and away from it and turned around I saw a high and frozen crested wave. And she said, the whole thing Mom. Then I thought of the other dream, I said, when a goose landed heavily on my head— But when I’d untangled it from my hair I saw it wasn’t a goose but a winged serpent writhing up into the sky like a disappearing bee. And she said, Tell me the whole story. And I said, Elise is dead, and all the frozen tears are mine of course and if that wave broke it might wash my life clear, and I might begin again from now and from here. And I looked into the rearview mirror— She was looking sideways, out the window, to the right —where they say the unlived life is. Ok? I said. And she said, Ok, still looking in that direction.
— Marie Howe, from The Spell
