This Pain

Tonight the sky heaves rain from the clouds. It is a good, healthy east coast rainstorm. Homesick, my heart copies the sky, and I cry for my mother.

Two poems, both by Mary Oliver, that I read like maps, for tonight I am so very far away.

A Pretty Song

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn't it?
This isn't a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.