To have without holding

By Marge Piercy

 

Learning to love differently is hard,

love with the hands wide open, love

with the doors banging on their hinges,

the cupboard unlocked, the wind

roaring and whimpering in the rooms

rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds

that thwack like rubber bands

in an open palm.

 

It hurts to love wide open

stretching the muscles that feel

as if they are made of wet plaster,

then of blunt knives, then

of sharp knives.

 

It hurts to thwart the reflexes

of grab, of clutch ; to love and let

go again and again. It pesters to remember

the lover who is not in the bed,

to hold back what is owed to the work

that gutters like a candle in a cave

without air, to love consciously,

conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

 

I can’t do it, you say it’s killing

me, but you thrive, you glow

on the street like a neon raspberry,

You float and sail, a helium balloon

bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing

on the cold and hot winds of our breath,

as we make and unmake in passionate

diastole and systole the rhythm

of our unbound bonding, to have

and not to hold, to love

with minimized malice, hunger

and anger moment by moment balanced.

 

A few years ago I tried to memorize several poems. I was mildly unsuccessful perhaps because my iPhone and internet addled brain can no long do that work well, perhaps because I am no longer a school aged child. Since then I have discovered the poems that want to lodge themselves in your heart do just that. It takes no effort of memorization or rehearsal. That is how the first lines of Piecy’s poem are for me. “Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges.” I want to not be the worried mom, the mom with nerves and I think I wear it deceivingly well to those who are not in my most intimate circle. But I am. I am a nervous mom, worrying about this outcome and that, weighing this risk and that. It was Piercy’s lines that gave me the mantra to think about motherhood differently. To love with my arms open, allowing the doors to flap on the hinges as I teach my children to live in the world. 

 

And now, once again I am worried what will become of the people I love, not just my children or parents, but my low income neighbors with childcare bearing on them and less hours to work as the economy comes to a halt. I worry about my neighbors with medically fragile people in their care that need Chlorox wipes for the maintenance of their daily life, now without the resources they need. And this poem comes to me again reminding me that what we have we ought to hold lightly. There is enough if we learn to love with our hands wide open. Love is a force that can make us selfish with the care of ourselves and our family but love is also a resource that can help us look beyond ourselves and care for others as well as ourselves. 

 

Be kind, 

 

Cara 

To Find a Steady Center is a daily poem and meditation to offer a short, good word to those who are anxious, fearful or lonely anh who might need a gentle word of hope, encouragement or perspective during social distancing.