I come back to myself

A poem for after we moved our daughter to college

I come back to myself

Can there be a river
without two banks to cradle it?

Can there be two banks
without a river to flow through?

Life is the flow of the water
through the body of the earth. 

Memories, too, are carved in the heart
leaving paths your finger can trace.

And then,
the silver fish swims
to the surface of the water,
rising from the depths
for a moment as the light
reflects off the iridescent scales
and I come back to myself again.

We moved our daughter to college this week. I told friends today that I feel like I can now bi-locate. Somehow I feel myself present in two places at one time, at least on some level. I know all those stories are true now.

I came home and cleaned random things and cried. Then I vacuumed and cried. Then I moved paintings around the house and cried. The next morning I woke up and cooked her breakfast, forgetting that she wasn’t upstairs sleeping in. Good Lord.

Life has changed.

After I had my initial crying spells, I thought to send her one of my favorite Rilke poems. We both said we would keep it close during these days. I found this image of the Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows translation of Rilke’s Book of Hours. This might make you cry, too.

I had started working on this poem before we moved her into her dorm, but I couldn’t finish it until now. I was waiting on the image of memories being carved into our hearts, tracing our fingers through them. Then, I looked back at the image of the two banks cradling the river and teared up again.

It is a never-ending process, isn’t it? Living, I mean. And we forget this so easily. We get caught up in mindless patterns and never give any thought to the depths of things. But, there are those moments when something rises to the surface and we are totally transformed.

Blessings,

Stuart