A Ring of Poetry

Every Thought...

Week 43: Waiting For Rain

All my life I have been waiting for rain, and when it comes, as it does regularly, seasonally, necessarily and purposefully, I am renewed.  Inevitably I forget this, but by this I know that God is good.


10/21:

  TWL, Lines 396-400: Then Spoke The Thunder

  396 Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
  397 Waited for rain, while the black clouds
  398 Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
  399 The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
  400 Then spoke the thunder

  396. GANGA is India’s River Ganges, said to sustain a tenth of the world’s population. In Indian legend, Ganga, a river goddess, flowed in the mountains of Paradise until King Bhagiratha prayed a thousand years to bring her down to earth. See Valmiki, Ramayana 1 (Bala Kanda, Book of Youth): 42-43 (ca. 400 BC).

  398. HIMAVANT is a holy mountain in the Himalayas, literally the snowy mountain. Himavant is also the mountain personified, the Hindu God of Snow, father of the river goddess Ganga. See Valmiki, Ramayana (note 396) 1.42.23.

  400. THEN SPOKE THE THUNDER: See Upanishads, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2.2: The Voice of Thunder (tr. Robert Ernest Hume, 1921):

  “The threefold offspring of Prajapati—gods (devas), men (manushyas), and devils (asuras) —dwelt with their father Prajapati as students of sacred knowledge (brahmacarya).  Having lived the life of a student of sacred knowledge, the gods said: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Restrain yourselves (damyata).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’

  So then the men said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Give (datta).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’

So then the devils said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Be compassionate (dayadhvam).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’

  This same thing does the divine voice here, thunder, repeat: Da! Da! Da! that is, restrain yourselves, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad: self-restraint, giving, compassion.”

  The divine voice of “Da da da” is considered further at notes 402, 412, 418, 419 and 434.

  The voice of thunder is also considered more broadly, beyond the Upanishads, at note 321.5.

  THE UPANISHADS are a key part of the Hindu books of knowledge (the Vedas) that teach about ultimate reality (Brahman) and spiritual self awareness (Atman). Upanishad means “sitting at the feet” and Brihadaranyaka, the name of this upanishad, means “great wilderness.”  Thus, one could paraphrase the source of this scriptural passage as coming from the Waste Land lessons of Sitting on the Bank (see note 192).


10/22:

  Voices In My Head

  from my journals, 1990

  Another hotel dream:  This time, I went into the hotel while Carrie stayed out in the car.

  For some reason, it was in my head this evening that the way to get a hotel room was to find an empty one, claim it and then check in with the front desk.  So I walked resolutely down the main hall that cut through the hotel front to back, not even considering any of the rooms being passed as possible vacancies until I got to the hotel’s far side, to a perimeter hallway, really a motel now —where I saw one door that seemed to mystically tell me that it would open to an empty room.  I opened it and walked in.

  There had been a person walking behind me down the hall —walking nonchalantly, just another patron I thought —until he walked into the same room behind me.  He didn’t say anything, but he looked like he was forming the start of a protest on his lips.  “Hey!  What are you...?” or something like that.  But I didn’t give him time for this and didn’t even turn to him and instead walked through the room to where there was another door into an adjacent room.

  I opened that door and found a couple on the bed, making self-absorbed love.  I closed the door, turned around and walked out of the outer room, lowering my eyes from the man who was, I now realized, this room’s proper occupant.  I had made a mistake. And it all came back to me —remembering conventionality and realizing where I had strayed.  I walked quickly back to the front desk to start all over.

  Carrie was there in the lobby.  There was no point in describing where I had been, but she had a wondering look on her face.  I went up to her, hugged her affectionately and decided that the best thing to do would be to propose.  So I stepped back a formal distance from her.  I wanted to do everything just right; I wasn’t on my knees, but I still assumed the air of a man beseechingly proposing to an honorable woman several levels above him.

  Someone brought out a textbook —a hymnal —that had proper procedures on how to propose.  It started out straightforwardly: Not ”Carrie, will you marry me,” but something as direct but with a few more flowery words —“How grateful would I live if you should be my wedded wife,” or something like that.  And then there were a dozen other things to say, all very ceremoniously intended and laid out on the page.  Each statement came in threes: I had to make a decision on which option to read out of each trio.  The first one was often something in Latin; the second and third differed in their degree of religious or secular tone.  The effect of all this was that my perfect proposal lost much of its glamor, and I largely stumbled along.

  But I got through it.  And she said yes.

  And immediately we were in separate hotel rooms.  I was in mine with six or seven friends / relatives, and Carrie was in hers.  My room had two beds, and I laid down on the bed nearest to the wall.  I reached over for the bedside phone and started dialing a number, but someone grabbed the phone, said that’s not right.  I don’t know who it was, but he was correct: I had dialed my home number, and though I hadn’t said anything, he knew who I was trying to reach.  “You’re both in the hotel, so you don’t have to dial so many numbers,” he explained.  This, he said, is how he had known I hadn’t dialed right.  And he took the phone and dialed for me and we reached Carrie’s room.

  Her brother George answered.  Somehow, briefly, I could see the whole room, and I was there, and it was the moment Carrie and I were breaking the news: We’re getting married!  No reaction.  There was Mr. C and Mrs. C and several others all leaning over something at the kitchen counter, going about their business.  But then I was on the phone again, apart from Carrie, and speaking to George.  He was concerned —not unhappy, but concerned.  “I don’t think you guys should rush it so much.  I mean, the seventeenth of this month?”  It was a date obviously arrived at in that room only; it was the first I had heard about it.

  George was also concerned about our financial standing and our schooling.  I assured him that we would be okay.  I talked at length, strolling around with a portable phone.  I was doing most, if not all, of the talking now.

  I talked and walked, and suddenly I found myself walking outside and down a nearby street.  Eventually the reception faded.  “George? George?”  I didn’t have the phone’s antenna all the way out (this was the early days of mobile phones) but even after extending it I could only hear static....

  I woke up and fell asleep several times after this, and I tried to finish the dream.  It seems that I did get several episodes added, but they were all hazy, and are now completely forgotten, but each had the same positive tone on the same theme —we are getting married, and Carrie’s family wants it all to go smoothly, and somehow I have the feeling that it will.


10/23:

  Telling The Story

  There wouldn’t be a story
  if there wasn’t used to be

  Like wrinkles in a poem
  stumbling on its own audacity

  or textures on a canvas
  proving authenticity

  or waves upon the sea
  resounding their testimony

  or the truth of a dream
  holding on to mystery.


10/24:

  The Path

So far, Cara love, this path we’re on
Has proven to be everything and more
Than anything two travelers alone
Could ever dream.  We’re seeing what before
Was far away: the moon, the stars, the sun,
Once distant beacons from another shore,
Wrap heaven’s light around us:  Every dawn
Is new and each night finds us wanting more.

And as we walk as one, the sky begins
Expanding and the shadows disappear.
We start to hope our journey never ends,
And then, believing God has led us here,
We put our hands together and we pray
For perfect fires that never burn away.


10/25:

  The Dance

I never knew how lucky a man could be
‘Til I met you and asked if you’d dance with me
And you agreed and said with a smile
You’d had your eye on me for a while.
You’ll never see a man as happy as me.

And then when you began to dance with me
I never knew how lovely the dance could be:
The way you moved, and move me still,
The way it feels you always will,
The way you hold me close and set me free.

I could keep dancing all night long with you.
I want to fall into the song with you.

And I never knew how perfect a song it was
Until the music started to carry us
Across the floor.  They may never see
Two lovers more than you and me
In tune, two dancers happier than us.

I want to make you as happy as you make me,
As happy, as lucky and loved and moved and free.


10/26:

  Someday (Even Now)

Someday
will be unafraid
of what we’ve dared to say, to hear,
the Proposal beginning to form
of a song singing fears into prayer.

Someday
will know the meaning of every kiss
and the truth in every holding moment,
the Path already turning
from if to when.

Someday, this day,
will see your caring as committing
and my trying as succeeding,
the Premise becoming the Promise
of who we are.

Someday, already, my love,
will live for today
and into tomorrow,
the Projection of our resolve,
the future unfolding, and

Someday, Cara, even now,
will share a better poem
with perfect words to say,
the Plans coming together
in synchronicity.

Someday, my love, is now,
and with this ring of Poetry
you are, if you will be,
my every day.


10/27:

  Moleskin 5.6: New Flow River

  In the fall of ‘75, the fall of twelve, we moved again, this time to home number ten. It was in the same suburb and same school district as the stepdad home, but this home was a step up: a real house with two stories over the basement, in a neighborhood with curving streets and stone street signs. All the houses were older and less cookie-cuttered: ours had stucco siding with sloped corners and leaded windows.  We were miles away from the Des Plaines River now, but we could hear O’Hare a little closer and sense the Kennedy Expressway to the south of us —different kinds of river flows. It seemed to be a “settle in” sort of place, with an easy walk to school, a new set of friends to meet and, once again, a paper route.