Tuesday, August 16, 2011

nothing is wasted

It's been raining in New York City for three days, and it's chilly. When it feels like fall, whether it's really fall or not, I fall in love everyday with a person who's not there. I listen to a lot of Ryan Adams and I close my eyes and see the fire treetops and write so many poems in my head that never make it down to paper.

The universe is awe-some. A poet named Laura Gilpin wrote my favorite poem, and I just learned today that she died the day after Valentine's Day in 2007 in Fairhope, Alabama. She studied at Columbia University, so she lived in NYC for a while. So the circles keep opening and closing, and my life has become this beautiful work of art being created in each moment by something that is not me and I sit idly by and watch, sometimes laughing and sometimes smiling and sometimes crying, but always joyous.

life after death by Laura Gilpin

These things I know:
How the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
so that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
and the leaves fall one by one
and the branches break in the wind
and the bark peels off slowly
and the trunk cracks
and the rain seeps in through the cracks
and the trunk falls to the ground
and the moss covers it
and in the spring, the rabbits find it
and build their nest
inside the dead tree
so that nothing is wasted in nature
or in love.

3 comments:

  1. You made me remember my July, all the month in New York, with the warm weather and sometimes raining, but hot.

    xxxx take care

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  2. Interesting that my ruminations on fall made you think of summer... <3 xx

    ReplyDelete