My Body Says "Quiet"

I arrived home from the Embodied Life retreat with a very sharp pain in my mid-back. It turns out some ribs had gone awry. I've spent the last two weeks mostly lying on my back and breathing consciously. Sort of like meditating all day, interspersed with naps. Apparently something in me was not ready to return to hecticity.

While at Santa Sabina I discovered a poem that delighted me. It’s from a book of poems by Kenneth Koch called New Addresses. The poem is To My Twenties.

To My Twenties

How lucky I ran into you
When everything was possible
For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart
And so happy to see any woman—
O woman! O my twentieth year!
Basking in you, you
Oasis from both growing and decay
Fantastic unheard of nine-or ten-year oasis
A palm tree, hey! And then another
And another—and water!
I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,
Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,
Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable
For the moment in any case, do you live now?
From my window I drop a nickel
By mistake. With
You I race down to get it
But I find there on
The street instead, a good friend,
X_____N_____, who says to me
Kenneth do you have a minute?
And I say yes! I am in my twenties!
I have plenty of time! In you I marry,
In you I first go to France; I make my best friends
In you, and a few enemies. I
Write a lot and am living all the time
And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you
After my teens and before my thirties.
You three together in a bar
I always preferred you because you were midmost
Most lustrous apparently strongest
Although now that I look back on you
What part have you played?
You never, ever, were stingy.
What you gave me you gave whole
But as for telling
Me how best to use it
You weren’t a genius at that.
Twenties, my soul
Is yours for the asking
You know that, if you ever come back.

Yes, each decade has its own charm, doesn’t it? Maybe even its own personality. My own twenties didn’t have nearly so many exclamation marks. I was married and raising two kids! (Wait, there’s an exclamation mark right there!)

I'm still pondering why this poem grabbed me as it did. Something about that twenty year old, that thirty year old, that (you get the idea) past me still operating in the present me. Plus wondering what I'd say to my twenties. Could we finally just sit down and talk?

It's not too late!

Naturally I want to keep my memory intact, but since puzzles are out—never could do them—I’ve turned to memorizing poetry. My memory has definitely improved. Tuck one in your pocket for something to do in the post office line. Added bonus: pick the right poem and your attitude improves along with your mind!

It’s not too late to memorize this poem by Mary Oliver, The Summer Day.
Don’t let Labor Day fool you. It’s still summer!

The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?