After hearing the news about Gannet Girl's unthinkable loss, I don't seem to have a lot to say in the Friday Five. But this Wendell Barry poem is one that speaks deeply to me about becoming more and more authentic and also more flagrantly generous with ourselves.
No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility that you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over the grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
Wendell Barry
6 comments:
Wow, that's really a wonderful one. It resonates with a book of his I just read; do you know "The Memory of Old Jack?"
You'd like it, I think. I sure did!
Great poem!
Less and less reason not to give yourself away. I like that!
oh, thank you. I've been wondering what to say.
well, wonderful poem...just wonderful.
Beautiful poem, and very appropriate.
Judi
Beautiful poem ... what Diane said!
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