Friday dawns cool and sunny, typical of spring here in the Midwest.  Of the projects in mind for today: a morning Zoom session to hear our grandson, a new author present his story of a visit to the zoo.  I will be privileged to witness his reading of the story.  He is six years old.  I was eighteen before writing a formal story of any kind.  Writing, finding words to express the meaning of our experience, is how we jointly make the world.  Words are a lifeline in a rising sea of obscruantism, a risky bet on a future for a sustainable home for ourselves.

Later in the morning I plan to edge the shrubbery beds.  The work is basic, requiring resolve to push the edging tool into the dirt, mindful of tree roots.  The excess soil is pitched by hand into a wheelbarrow.  I recognize this is similar to work performed by generations of my ancestors, by hand, without the benefit of powered machines.  I would not want to do without the machines, work limited to my own muscles or to that of a draft animal, a horse or mule.  That was not so long ago, in my grandparents time.  My mother told me stories about walking behind a mule-powered plow.  I am gratified by the work-by-hand in the yard.  I feel closer to my ancestors when my hands are in the dirt.

I have resumed reading in Julia Kristeva’s work, This Incredible Need To Believe.  The book is a life changing read.  The writer “pleads for a reformative role that the ‘Humanities’ might play in a social and political field threatened by disintegration,..to shout out the need for a more courageous sort of participation,…in this ‘democracy of opinion’ that modern showbiz society has become.” p. 29

Finally this poem seems appropriate for today.

I Never Wanted To Die

by Dorianne Laux

It’s the best part of the day, morning light sliding
down rooftops, treetops, the birds pulling themselves
up out of whatever stupor darkened their wings,
night still in their throats.

I never wanted to die. Even when those I loved
died around me, away from me, beyond me. 
My life was never in question, if for no other reason
than I wanted to wake up and see what happened next. 

And I continue to want to open like that, like the flowers
who lift their heavy heads as the hills outside the window
flare gold for a moment before they turn
on their sides and bare their creased backs.

Even the cut flowers in a jar of water lift
their soon to be dead heads and open
their eyes, even they want a few more sips,
to dwell here, in paradise, a few days longer.

“There have been times when my life became what seemed to me, in certain dark moments, an unbearable weight, another day to be slogged through, another night to endure. And when thoughts of stepping off the edge of the world slipped in, I found that what I really could not bear was missing out on the larger narrative unwinding around me. This surprising insight seemed worthy of a poem.”
—Dorianne Laux

 Dorianne Laux is the author of several books including Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 2020), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

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