Air

The following is a poem I wrote to my ex wife, about six years before she was my ex, when things first started going bad, when my condition first started effecting our marriage. I took her to a nice little spot we both liked and gave it to her to read. She was untouched, just said, “Yeah, you haven’t talked much lately.” She is very concrete, was looking for more than just words on a page, she wanted to see actions, results. I was crushed, and discouraged, seeing that we were so far apart, that this labor of love of mine was the best I could do, and it wasn’t enough. I was already doing the best I could. I would say the most important thing in a marriage is to truly listen, be present with your whole self, and respond. In a word, Therese, compassion.

AIR

Tender lays me down on the mountainside.
Takes me kindly and well in the trees.
Loves me lightly and holds me quietly by the waters edge.

Let me dream of you and me far from here
in a world of water and wood and sky.
I’ll light a quick and noisy little fire
In the crisp and brittle morning air
so clean it rings with clarity
like a newly struck bell.
Gentle, fresh and strikingly new each morning.
This mountain morning air,
the breathe of God,
so clear its almost not there
yet is everywhere, present at all times
in clean and startlingly gentle power.
It is defined as much by what it is not
as by what it is.
Not heavy, not close, not stifling damp.
Not pressing with intent
nor crowded with memories.
So clear it is not there.
It doesn’t fill you too full,
too soon when you breathe,
nor does it leave you empty.
This mountain morning air,
sometimes so cold and crisp
it hurts going in,
then makes a strange warmth in your chest
as you draw on its healing power,
then let go in that moist, lingering cloud.
It invites you to draw deeply and often
and leaves you feeling new.

I have loved you long but not too well.
and you have been there patient, tolerant, true.
Let me begin fresh.
Let me draw deep and long
of His breath and hold Him within me
and let go of all the rest in a cloud.
And I shall be clean and clear,
not full, not pressing,
not chased or bent by memory.
Present at all times
yet so light and true and aware
that I shall hardly seem to be there at all
when presence is not what we need.
Let me be rid of the pain,
and the weight,
and the voices.
May I find focus
and discipline
and peace.

And maybe we’ll talk.
and maybe it will matter
that I worked so hard
and things will be better.
I’m just so wore out all the time.
There’s so much going on in my head,
a plump, pubescent boy
who wants more than anything to be a girl
and a skinny, angry teenager
who wants more than anything
to strike out and self destruct
and it seems almost impossible
to talk to you about it.
I’m always afraid of the way
you’ll respond to what I say.
I don’t know if you believe me sometimes
I feel angry a lot these days.
Not buried deep like it used to be
but right near the surface.
I know i’ve been a jerk sometimes.
It takes energy for me to be a good husband,
a good person, and I don’t have much energy right now.

I can’t tell you
just what’s wrong,
I can’t seem to see it or feel it
Perhaps it is like the air,
in me around me,
part of me.
Maybe I carry it with me all the time
and can go nowhere without it.
I seem to have gone nowhere with it, so far.

And I will lightly lay you down
in earshot of the creek,
in newly sprouted eel grass,
in the sand beyond the brush.
On a blanket smelling strongly of grandchildren.
I will kiss your lips so tenderly
you might reach out with yours.
And will touch you once again
with fluid passion fearlessly.
And I will be there gently
clean, clear, true and cool.
And you will be there deeply true,
gentle as always,
clean, clear, true, and warm.
and I will be there...
and I will be there...
and I will be there.

As you might suspect I am an insecure, self centered person desparate for praise and validation. A frustrated, undisciplined writer, unable to focus enough to put it all to gether. I am often ruled by my dysfunction and beat myself up often. by turns arrogant and self abusive. But I am at times peaceful these days because I have found that God truly does love me and if I really work at being mindful of him, I function and feel so much better. It is not in asking him to be with me, for he always is (yet I still beg him to be) it is in my removing the barriers I place between He and I. Arrogance and self centeredness destroyed my marriage more than my wife's not understanding or apreciating me. I would say to all looking for a way to make a better marriage, lay out your heart to your mate, risk being rejected, you will probably be wonderfully surprised at what happens, Be subordinate to one another, which is what Paul really says (Ephesians), serve one another, which is what Jesus says. Out do one another in showing honor (Paul, Romans), and "over all these, put on love, the bond of perfection."
(Col 3:14, truly Pauline), and 1 Coronthians 13 is still a beautiful hymn to love,no matter its psychological origins, and to say "do as I say, not as I do", is an archaic understanding of the church, pre Vatican II, not at all in keeping with the church I have come to know and love in the past 20 years. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests...It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. How can this be wrong? Love is of God. the love Paul trys to desribe, be it based on his faults or not, it is love. Is it not what we all seek? Sadly, unconditional love is only possible for God, for the trinity, we seem always to screw it up, sooner or later, but the kind of love Paul describes understands this, and still loves. Be nice to one another, Isn't that the first thing we are taught when we step out into the world, play nice?