Relationship with a Capital R

The ironic thing about the Relationship (with a capital R) is that it is the place where you are most likely to run up against your own limitations. No fair! Our culture sells romantic love as a kind of panacea for the aloneness that is inherent to the human condition. Maybe it is partially that, but its essential nature less straightforward.

It is in relationship that we see the exact ways that we are alone. This first poem is about the disillusionment that happens when you realize love - as you have known it so far - might not be enough.

Your Heart

When you give your

heart

You pretend it beats

vibrant and full of blood- You say

take this, it will be a worthy companion

to you. Then little by little the hollowness

and the cracks are exposed

The way the thing skips a beat.

You patch it up Move along, nothing

to see here.

Then one day

                                   

broken crumpled moth wings

tarpaper

daub - stick, mud tape

The crowds gather stand around and gawk at the thing

wondering if it will ever fulfill its former promise.

Sometimes you wish for something less - no matter how flawed it might be. You want to know that you are separate, even from those you love. 

In My Daylight

In the thick dark

of the front seat

of his dented Volvo

parked on a dry

nighttime riverbed

wrapped in Leonard Cohen’s voice

beside a man

I’ll never know

well. Talking

the kids

from the Elwha tribe

used to pull pranks

on that bridge. They would

make dummies that looked

real and  throw them

into the middle

of the narrow bridge

under front wheels, screeching

to a halt and almost

through that guardrail

one time.

I will never read

him in the dark. It will

be over after

our first fight. In the dark

of the places he grew

up, I am not required,

to fill any holes.

Love and Choice

I met my husband, Joe, years before we started dating; we ran in the same circles. I remember the exact moment when I started falling for him. I worked at The Country Aire, a natural grocery in Port Angeles, Washington. Joe had just returned from a trip to Thailand and at one glance I could see and feel the electricity he brought back with him from that trip. My feelings for him were further confirmed by the twinge I got when a mutual friend talked of setting him up with someone else. The poem below is our wedding poem and tells the story of that 'first meeting'. Perhaps more importantly it tells the story of us choosing one another.

Joseph Elvis Vastano of the Intrepid Heart

When you leaned in

toward me, across the counter

and told me

you were glad

to see

me and I knew

as you walked away, the tips of your curls red-sunshine-gold

that you were.

That we keep choosing

to face one another’s walls-

instead of walking out

onto the open plains of life lived alone.

When I turn around and you are still there, and again, and again- still there.

It is not easy,

it is not clean,

it is gloriously messy.

Like Saguaro. Like rocks on the hillside. Like flood waters in the desert

I imagine

adventures before us- sorrows and joy.

Trips across continents and waters. Worlds from

the inside-out.

Really though- it is all imagined.

We cannot know what faces us.

As I face the unknown it is you I want at my side, Joseph

of the Intrepid Heart.

Choice

Of all of the things I think I know about marriage, it is choice that impresses me the most. While we don't choose to fall in love, or when and certainly not with whom - we do choose to keep love, to do the things that sustain it, and we keep expecting to fall into love yet again.

Many of my favorite couples (you know who you are!) are people you wouldn't think would work well together. It is my guess that from the outside Joe and I were an odd match.  This man I keep choosing to spend my life with is as willful as I am. The poem that follows is a rant, a declaration. We choose to use our powers for good.

We will not be torn apart by Wrath or Zest or Zeal.

 

We will not be torn apart

by passion, rather we will be joined

by it. Your water to my fire

we make steam – and power the gears

and pistons of our own valiant

new world. Our machines will fly

like eagles no matter how improbable

they seem. Your fish and my lion

will splash in the sunlight. We will accelerate

into hairpin turns. Your stories will dance the tarantella

around my poems then lean in close

for whispered truths.

We will not be torn apart by resentments,

rather we will hike up our trousers and wade

in and part the waters of them. In their wake

we will discover sand dollars, snail

houses and moon stones. We may not hike

to the top of the ridge hand in hand, but surely

we will stand there together. Look out at high-

country lakes, the ocotillo, the golden eagle hefting

from the boulder, the tiny glittering cities.

We will not be torn apart by passions, rather

we will uncover them. You bring the dynamite

and the blasting caps. I will bring the earplugs

and a nice picnic lunch. After the sediment

settles we’ll eat bread and cheese and sort

our treasure.

Joe in the tent by a lake in Arizona, with our trusty steed standing by.

Our Future

While we cannot know our futures -to paraphrase a poet I know- but it is fun to hatch schemes. In an earlier post I talked about my sadness that our son is growing up and moving on. That sadness is truly counter-balanced by the places Joe and I will go and the treasures we will sort.