Friday, May 20, 2011

Timing is Everything

Marriage Circa 2011, ©2011, H.Hunter, Collage: paper and acrylic paint

This poem by W.S. Merwin in a recent New Yorker caught my eye, mind and heart. Perfect for spring, when newborn leaves emerge suddenly while you're inside, retrieving a paintbrush you forgot.

Turning

going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember


almost everything it seems sometimes 
and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice when they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them


this morning the black shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying


Are you ready this time

Merwin ends the poem so abruptly--as if he's just turned his head to look down at his dog. Doesn't it often seem like this--that those chances to catch something very important pass by in the blink of an eye?

6 comments:

  1. I always get a sense of melancholia with Merwin's poetry, or maybe it's a separateness or alienation that sings an inner song to me.

    Quite like your collage, Hannah. Your gent is hanging upside down in his corner. Are we peeking at him through a keyhole?

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  2. what a fabulous reminder to fully live life in the moment. beautiful page too!

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  3. Which one of us has taken up trapeze, while I was pruning the trees?

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  4. Maddy--I think it's a sense of loss that Merwin returns to often--particularly with regard to the environment. While writing the post, I read that he'd moved to Hawaii and had reclaimed the forest on the land he owned--a former plantation.

    Thanks Phoenix?

    Monty--I think we're both pretty good at it:)

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  5. Merwin the magnificent and how wonderful that you post a marriage piece when Venus and Mars just began a new 2.5 year relationship dance on Monday...it's a lovely time to recommit to the relationship with our own inner masculine & feminine to make sure the lines of communication are open.

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  6. What a great conjunction Donna. I find it so interesting when I bring my awareness to the dance of masculine and feminine. Perhaps it's time to make a collage for each of these parts!

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