Saturday, August 28, 2010

A reminder about loving without attachment...

I love this poem...

Giant dandelion, summer 2010, Bend, OR...

To Have Without Holding ~ 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 ballon
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 hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

~o~o~o~

1 comment:

Dianne Juhl said...

This poem helps me remember that I begin with loving myself, without attachment to provisional stories or beliefs that have shaped behavior but no longer serve. This can be the most challenging task of all…