Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Winter Should Have Meaning

I read "Snowdrops" by Louise Gluck this morning. It's in her book, The Wild Iris. It became a kind of prayer  to me for those I know (and don't know) who suffer from depression and seasonal disorders. Ms. Gluck is so honest. And her poetry is so good. And her experience seems to me to strike a beautiful balance between hopelessness and hopefulness, deadness and renewal.

All of us deal with depressing experiences and feelings from time to time. Living into the life-cycle that the poem takes us through takes patience. And courage. And trust.

Mindfulness and contemplative prayer gently and persistently train us in these 'virtues.'

Our tendency is too often to read a poem like this once, twice or three times and enjoy the momentary buzz we get from it. This is not enough.

If the poem speaks to us, and if we sense it might bring us more deeply into the living cycle that the poet lives and describes, we must sync our cycle, challenging as it is to do, with the snowdrop.


--


Snowdrops~Louise Gluck

Do you know what I was, how I lived?  You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me.  I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my  body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring-

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.