Compare: the rich fools and the poor losers,
happiness and misery, as if the surface was their story
through and through, as if the smiles upon their faces
ran as deep as the scowl on yours.
And more: you dream big dreams constructed of envy,
green as grass, born in shadows,
from which the mansions in your mind stretch higher,
around which the bitter grass grows greener.
Despair: it is not fair, the way they never finished high
school, how they cheated everyone to get ahead, leaving you
looking through fences, cursing the gods of sides,
of giving and taking.
But what for? Your misery wins you nothing,
your curses even less, the vacuous disapproval
of your neighbors shaking their heads, tut-tutting
and casting down their eyes on your poverty.
No more than a short-month twelfth of my poems are hopelessly romantic, but this is the month to share them, and this week, without a key, reflects the beginning of the journey.
Serenity: now there's a prayer! A wish and a word: I might as well fly to the top of the world or trudge across vast deserts. I could just as easily become one with this big river. "Calm down," says the ferryman. Yeah, sure, easier said than done. If peace were as easy as pausing I would stop everything and let this water flow. To know serenity, santi, salaam, shalom, I should not trouble you, or myself, with these opening chapters or the easier pages of this story. Let me skip right to the faith and love and healing; let me sit down, close my eyes and surrender. A wish and a word, to accept the things around me just as they are, to not be afraid of the world I'm in, to find my perch a few miles out of town. A prayer, even before I confess my faith, before I know what to believe. Here, at the beginning of my story: serenity!
Co-opting the Tune and Refrain of Widow's Grove,
by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
The sky above, the earth below
The city stirs, the river flows.
We walk at night that we may see
The stars and know we’re not alone,
That we may breathe a different air
And walk along a quiet shore,
Stand silent where the river laps
Up to our feet (wondering where
We were before),
I followed you to the river
That washes out to the sea.
Between city lights and stars at night,
That's where I'll be.
---
The earth is black, the sky is blue.
The river bends a mirrored view
Of the evening glow of lights familiar,
Heaven down and shore to shore.
We meet the night. We take the time
To be together, you and I,
Across the river, in between
The city and a giant sky.
I followed you to the river
That washes out to the sea.
Between city lights and stars at night,
That's where I'll be.
---
We breathe the sky and feel the earth
And find our place beneath the stars,
Your arm in mine and mine in yours.
The world is right and the night is ours.
I followed you to the river
That washes out to the sea.
Between city lights and stars at night,
That's where I'll be.
Between city lights and stars at night,
That's where I'll be.
Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous Starry Night painting shows a wild sky with swirling, pyrotechnic stars that cast a blue-gray glow on the town below it. It must be late at night, as there are no house lights and no people. This is the Starry, Starry Night of Don McLean’s song Vincent, reflecting how the artist “suffered for [his] sanity.”
It is a powerful moment, but I prefer Van Gogh’s earlier astral painting: Starry Night over the Rhone. The night is calmer, the stars are more balanced and the city is still awake with its own lights; a river flows across the canvas and there are exactly two people on the riverside, standing together and inviting us to take it all in.
Years ago, when I was one of two people, we bought a copy of this painting for our living room. My other is no longer with me; she is somewhere else, suffering for her own sanity now, and my days with her are forever in the past, but I still like keeping that painting on my wall...
