AUGUSTE RODIN
Poems come slowly. They break surface like dolphins after long stretches of going under. So writing a book of poems for me is different than writing my other books. With poems, I have to sit when I’m able and try to make heart-sense of what life has been doing to me and with me. Like wringing out a sponge, I squeeze what matters onto the page, let it dry, and see what’s there the next day. One by one, they gather into an instructive whole. All this to say that in trying to make sense of my own experience, I discovered a theme to the journey—that over the years we are all worn away of excess and made elemental. To survive this process, we often need to hold each other up in order to discover and return to what matters.
William Carlos Williams wrote, “It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” We run from crisis to crisis, looking for our worth in all the wrong places, wanting to be loved and honored, when suffering only humbles us to the eternal task of loving and honoring. Why? Because things that matter take time, so we might outwait all urgency and outgrow our ambitions. Then, with nowhere to go, we are forced to accept ourselves, as we are, and care for everything and everyone from the bare moment we wake in.
In one of his last poems, called “my prayer,” E. E. Cummings said, “God make me the poet of simplicity, force, and clearness.” These are qualities that we can only settle into. And so, the life of expression is made for the long haul, a marriage between heart and soul wherever life takes us.
The French poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert, who survived the insanity of World War II, speaks carefully about the patience deep expression takes in this poem written in the 1940s:
To Paint the Portrait of a Bird
Paint first a cage
with an open door
paint then
something pretty
something simple
something handsome
something useful
for the bird
then place the canvas against a tree
in a garden
in a wood
or in a forest
hide behind the tree
silently
motionless
Sometimes the bird arrives at once
but it may also take many years
before making up its mind
Do not be discouraged
wait
wait if need be many years
a speedy or a delayed arrival
bears no relation
to the success of the portrait
When the bird arrives
if it arrives
observe the most profound silence
wait until the bird enters the cage
and when it has entered
close the door gently with a stroke of the brush
then
paint out one by one all the bars of the cage
taking care to touch none of the bird’s feathers
Paint then the portrait of a tree
choosing the loveliest of its branches
for the bird
paint too the green foliage and the fresh wind
the dust of the sun
and the noise of insects
in the grass in the summer heat
and then wait for the bird to sing
If the bird does not sing
it is a bad sign
a sign that the picture is bad
but if it sings it is a good sign
a sign that you can sign
So you pluck gently then
one of the bird’s feathers
and you write your name
in a corner of the portrait.
The two great lessons from this poem are: “Wait, wait if need be many years, a speedy or a delayed arrival bears no relation to the success of the portrait,” and “Wait for the bird to sing. If the bird does not sing, it is a bad sign, a sign that the picture is bad.” How long things take to reveal themselves is no measure of our worth. And even after years of work, if the work doesn’t sing, we need to start over. These are simple but hard truths to face.
Yet in spite of the difficulties we face in receiving what comes to us, the river of the deep never stops flowing through us. The Chinese poet Su Tung-P’o of the Song Dynasty said, “How many thousands of poems have flowed through me tonight! And tomorrow I won’t be able to repeat even one word.”
So, when not doing well, when full of doubt or pain or worry, when unable to find your way, try, very slowly, to return to moments that feel foundational. By “foundational” I mean moments that are solid, in which you feel directly connected to life, in which you feel safe and thorough, in which you feel at peace, even for a few seconds.
You don’t have to name these foundational moments, or explain them, or fit them into some theological box. You simply have to experience them and locate them, so you have a chance to return to them or to moments like them, when you need to.
In time, you will chart a constellation of foundational moments that can hold you up when you fall down. And mysteriously, when identified and honored, these moments of peace and clearness start to join. So, in time, our foundational field enlarges when we have the courage to find and receive what will hold us up.
Such a moment might be watching the apple blossoms fold over in the wind. Or falling into the rhythm of chopping vegetables in the afternoon light. Or watching the runoff in spring rush around a fallen limb. You’ll know these moments are foundational when you can’t reduce them or be distracted from them. Such a moment might be listening to your ninety-year-old mother breathe while she sleeps. Or watching a young woman well up on her cell phone, not sure what she is hearing, but knowing that you are watching a life living.
Despite our want to speed things up and pin things down, we’re called to move slowly as a way to inhabit life more than name it. The greatest way we can practice this is by staying in conversation with the Mystery of Life itself. It’s more important to experience the Unnamed Mystery as it moves through us and about us than to argue if that enormous presence is God, Nature, Physics, or the Bareness of Being that Buddhists speak of. Ultimately, names are only useful as doorways to what can’t be named. Like a gymnast tumbling steadfast through the air, patience is the strength of soul that lets us glide ever so slowly through the eye of the Universe.
How long things take to reveal themselves is no measure of our worth. And even after years of work, if the work doesn’t sing, we need to start over. These are simple but hard truths to face.
An Invitation to Learn from Patience
• In your journal, enter an experiment in patience by writing a line or sentence every other day, living life in between. Do this for two weeks and see what expression has revealed itself to you. Then shape that expression.
• In conversation with a friend or loved one, share the piece that you’ve retrieved through your experiment in patience and discuss the process.