we will be known for
feelings of the heart – small, hard,
and full of meanness
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
Of the Empire by Mary Oliver.
My sister Lisa and I try to connect and talk about once a month.
I’ll get asked, what do you talk about and I say, ‘Oh just stuff.‘
The thing is as I pass through my days and weeks and I see things and I hear things and feel things and I taste things and I read things, I think, I have to remember to tell this to Lisa.
And when we can, we just talk.
Beyond my understanding, my sister often reads these things I write and lets me know when something makes a point.
It was Lisa who connected me with the poems of Mary Oliver.
I find it interesting that Ms. Oliver wrote this poem, Of the Empire, back in 2008.
Maybe she saw this coming back then.
Maybe we aren’t so different from where we were in 2008.
It’s just that there are those today who can read this poem and say ‘so what?’
Nevertheless, Of the Empire, reads as an indictment, a description of today in a way that is chilling.
Painting with words that tingles in your toes.
I have to also that those last two sentences bring my sister Lisa to mind.
Not because it describes her but just the opposite.
I have known my sister my entire life.
And let me tell you, her heart?
Her heart has never been small.
Her heart has never been hard.
Her heart has never been full of meanness.
Her heart is huge, open and soft and full of love.
No Haiku For You 