Whom to Blame

It was a bitterly cold late-January morning.  I was teetering on the edge of Winter Depression, a place I am prone to visit when I cannot be outside in the garden.  New Year's Day was long gone with no resolutions in place.  And I didn't seem to care too much, having come to the conclusion that those promises we make to ourselves are simply lame attempts to have some control over our sorry lives.  As if we could.

It is with this dark attitude that I checked my email.  I found one from Matthew, who truly does not email too often.  Given that Matthew is one of my favorite people, I opened the email with a possibly lighter heart.  And this is what he had to say:

Here is a poem. I heard it on NPR this week driving into the city read by Billy Collins in an interview on the Leonard Lopate show. I was driving slowly in traffic underneath the giant raised highways at the George Washington Bridge merge in the Bronx.  I fell in love with an old brick tenement apartment building perched on a cliff and he read this poem on the air.

Okay.  I'll buy.

I probably read the poem five times that morning.  It kept drawing me back.  It was more than a poem; it was a missive.  It was trying to tell me something.  And I got it.  The result is this blog.  With great love to Matthew and to Billy Collins, I will end this introduction (and begin this blog) with the poem.  Just try not to like it.

Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

 - Billy Collins