Seedlings

I didn’t know what to write this week. I started several posts and abandoned them. I stayed up too late reading poems, looking for something to offer you. The truth is that I’m tired. I know I’m not alone in that. In the last few years, grief and loss have been more frequent companions, and I’m aware that’s true for many of us. Often the best thing I can do is to sit with those companions, unwelcome as they are.

Geranium
 by Karen Solie

It seemed needlessly cruel 
that I couldn’t coax even the hardiest, 
homeliest, dullest of plants to grow 
in the one west-facing window 
of that place, with its air conditioner, sealed 
with duct tape, that didn’t work, 
and its mouse-hole, stuffed with steel 
wool, that did. And an equally 
needless kindness even more 
unbearable, that unexpected flowering 
inside the cheap circumference 
of the pot while I was nearly 
bedridden, of seeds borne on a broad wind 
that flew in, and volunteered.

Solie’s poem reminds me that in some seasons of life even what is beautiful hurts, of how “unbearable” kindness feels when difficult feelings lie so close to the surface of awareness that one gentle touch or smile, one word of understanding, can leave me incapable of holding myself together.

The gift of an unplanted seedling in a cheap plastic pot reminds me of Wendell Berry’s phrase “the grace of the world.” There’s no way to unravel the threads of sadness and pain from that grace. They are all part of the pattern. I need to be present to all of it.

With appreciation,

Carri.

P.S. The words, “the grace of the world” are from Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things.”