Are You Old Enough To Appreciate the Moment ?

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life's way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won't give you smart or brave,
so you'll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

- Eleanor Lerman

**
I love this poem. I love it more every time that I read it.

I still have the sea inside, from being in Fla.

It has occurred to me that moving through life, learning from life, if you have ingested your
life, then you have lots inside that will not pass away or be lost.
Love, you have inside, and people. You have places too, and certain memories, certain moments. It becomes a kind of a wealth and you realize that this is eternity, not eternity as some future time and place. The eternal is available when we step outside of time and space in recognition of God, timelessness, love, connection -- all that binds us to one another and to the world.

I thought about this in terms of my brothers and sister , I thought, "Well, the things that they do and have and are good at, I don't need to do those things, because I got it through them." So what's to be jealous of? I can have surfing, the water, wealth, paralysis, suffering, joy, craftsmanship, talent, passion and the other gifts belonging to those I am bonded to. I have those experiences talents and traumas, just as I know alcoholism from my father . I don't need to become alcoholic to know it, and I don't have to fish or shoot a gun or drive a boat to feel it. The good and the bad, it works the same. So having the sea inside comes from the many hours I've spent there, the many hours my parents and siblings and ancestors visited lived and worshipped there. The sea is mine and me.

I'm just making this up, but maybe its true. Or maybe it's a metaphor for what's true.

It's having the experience of thinking, "I wonder what so-and-so would think about that ?"
And then , you know what they would think or feel or say about that, you'd know what kind of joke that they'd tell , or what kind of sarcasm would tinge their voice. Because you got it.
You got them.

It occurred to me when my mother died that in the last years of her life, I 'got' her. Then I realized that others in the family never got her, she never made sense to them, they , in a sense misinterpreted. So I was able to advocate for her, to take her part, to say what she would have said if she could have said anything. I knew. I felt beholden, as though it was my duty. How terrible to have no one stick up for you, no one to take your part. Did she get me? I'm not sure about that. But I do know that she strained the boundaries of her own willingness to try. She wanted to see through my eyes, she wanted to be part of me to participate with me in the world. It was difficult for her, but there it is.

It's like this other poem that I read on Whiskey River:

Remember

That to have the eyes of an artist,
That can be enough,
The ear of a poet,
That can be enough.
The soul of a human
just pointed
in the direction of the divine,
that can be more than enough.
I tell you this to remind myself.
Every gesture is an act of creation.
Even empty spaces and silence
can be the wings and voices of angels.

- Michele Linfante

**