There is a brilliant poet out there unknown to me until Jill Webb shared his work. He is Li-Young Lee.
We count on love "prevailing." Yet, if we live life with passion, we are sure to entertain doubts just as Mother Teresa doubted God.
For caregivers, the important thing is that no patient's body is simply "...a tree/ in which lived a bird." The beauty of Lee's writing saves our hearts from slowly turning to stone & our work shifting from momentous to meaningless.
As I often write, far to many miss out on poetry's power for fear they "Won't get it" or "It's too confusing."
The final stanzas of "The Undressing", are a pearl necklace of words strung by a genius:
If love doesn’t prevail,
who wants to live in this world?
Are you listening?
You thought my body was a tree
in which lived a bird. But now,
can’t you see flocks alive in this blazing foliage?
Blue throngs, gold multitudes, and pale congregations.
And each member flits from branch to living branch.
Each is singing at different amplitudes and frequencies.
Each is speaking secrets that will ripen into sentence.
And their voices fan my fragrant smoldering.
Disclosing the indestructible body of law.
Ratifying ancient covenants. Establishing new cities.
And their notes time the budding
of your own flowering.
Die now. And climb up into this burning.
Thank you, Mr. Lee.
-Erie Chapman