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On Abiding
I never wanted to be awash in agreement, I never wanted to argue or agonize, only to listen for the rain blown against glass, sense who you are when you are alone but with me. Present, the way a birch late at night is present to wind. * Only I wanted you next to me in a sleeping curve of heat. It seemed I was always misplacing you. But I loved every part, eyelashes. and limbs, the way you leapt into the day. To want a simple life might mean to have given up on expectation. It could mean that faith is easily crushed, that something as easy as crossing the street at dusk is suddenly too physical, too narrow, too empty, too hard, too rich, too small, too soon. * If I could see through the rains, the liquid trees, quarrel only for a moment, never be rushed. Stop completely at the river’s lightflutter and wait until it passes and feel the quiet which is the sound of hawk and cloud—to make good of what you have, to feel the air press around you and not regret the loss of you— the windows of the night-trains filling with metal dusk—snow turning back to rain, the underside of everything you have ever cared for, unsparing days and nights, the plain evening, hard work, the uncertainty, the courageous happiness, the suffering, to see it, to stay alive, to hope, to hope for more, to act, to crave, to reach for, to let ourselves be graced, to leave behind made things, luminous things, cool trails of fire, to tap and then step back, falling silent, to risk an opening, to find time to be nowhere and lost and to love. If we can. If we do.