Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Lucky Life

My friend Robin, The Other Mother, inspires me. She's a poet, a mom, an executive director, a blogger, a fellow adventurer. I have known her for 17 years! Yesterday, she asked a question on her blog: what surprises you most about your life so far?

My answer: my luck.

The poet Gerald Stern was one of Robin's teachers at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. I was lucky to get rejected by that writing program. While I don't love Stern like I love Shakespeare, or Sam Shepard, or Larry Levis, I do love a poem by him called Lucky Life. And here is the end of this poem, and then a link to the whole thing.

Dear waves, what will you do for me this year?
Will you drown out my scream?
Will you let me rise through the fog?
Will you fill me with that old salt feeling?
Will you let me take my long steps in the cold sand?
Will you let me lie on the white bedspread and study
the black clouds with the blue holes in them?
Will you let me see the rusty trees and the old monoplanes one more year?
Will you still let me draw my sacred figures
and move the kites and the birds around with my dark mind?

Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life. Lucky life.


-- from Lucky Life

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