Gravity and Luck
After publishing yesterday’s post (Why not says yes?), I reopened a poem my dear friend Lyn had sent to me the evening before. I was amazed to see how her writing had seeped into my thoughts and percolated overnight. My saying yes is certainly mine, but apparently I had shared this sentiment often enough with Lyn that she included a bit of my story in one of her recent poems. With Lyn’s permission, here it is...and with apologies to Lyn about the incorrect formatting of this remarkable poem. I can’t seem to correct this here in Substack.
Gravity & Luck 3
Lyn Sperry, March 2024The present is full, a snake with a rodent passing
through its body. It passes slowly, the way we age
although it feels quicksilver to us. I fear
my husband will die, that I will die, that our friends will die.
I practice mindfulness, tune into my breath & come out
serene & open & soft until
the fears kick in again. In the heat of Fes, Morocco I am sick, miserable
as I lose control of my body. My husband is not sick, takes care of me,
brings toast, bananas & mint tea when I’m better. In Vermont
on winter mornings we sit by the wood stove and share inklings of thoughts
& intentions & plans, me with my coffee, him with his tea, bound to each other
near the fire, in the warmth. The dogs laze,
make us a foursome, a family, require that we tend to neediness &
unruliness. The problem now is mortality,
too many of our friends have gotten cancer—some lived
& some died.
A dear friend, almost seventy, is sailing from Florida
to the Bahamas. A landlubber, she signed on to be crew,
to work for the well-being of the boat as it crosses the Gulf Stream
with its sudden storms & fish that fly. Her new motto is
never say no to adventure. What’s true is that gravity pulls you
to the solid of the earth, provides a base on which we
can teeter and trip. It’s the natural attraction between physical bodies,
between us & death if death is an invisible sun we revolve around.
Sometimes the earth holds us like birds feed their young, with a benign attention,
but often we wish for intervention. Really all we want is for gravity
to hold us secure & for luck to intervene when things get too uncomfortably
grounded, mired in the mud. My friend who was sailing to the Bahamas is not
anymore. The boat was hit by lightning at its mooring, took on water & the motor
wouldn’t be fixed & the wind gauge wouldn’t work. Despite spending months
preparing to sail her, they decided to abandon their plans & drive to the
Gulf Coast keys instead. They took off like tree swallows, juking and diving, happy in
the Florida warmth.