Seconds of Pleasure

Isn't that just like life, full of seconds of pleasure and moments of pain. I grieved for about an hour and some change over the loss of a really pleasant relationship. My grieving was cut short by the following poem:

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY. by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a colour slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
And feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

*let it be noted: Billy Collins is the former U.S. Poet Laureate*
Anyway, the poem talks about a thing that is inexplicable and personal, the meaning of a poem, which more often than not is a feeling, an image, a tug at the heart and/or head. And often, that's what relationships come down to: A feeling, an image, a tug at the heart and/or head.

Lately I've had a lot of beginnings and endings. I've started quite a few ventures and seen a few others come to close. I've learned that some people don't quite fit in my life as well as I'd hoped they would and I've made space for others. It's a great process just because it is, indelibly, just that: A process. For once my head is not turned in 50 different directions, leaving me exhausted and indiscriminate. I am awake, I am aware, I have enough time to see the changes coming and to start bracing myself even if I don't feel like 'getting it over with already.'

For once I'm not out looking for trouble, and for once, i have no qualms about enjoying trouble when it comes knocking.

This time in life is a state of grace. Thank god I found Billy Collins' poem today and realized what a great gift I've been given by being offered an 'out'. I can see, clear as day, that the ending of a relationship does not end friendship, camaraderie, affection or love. It just acknowledges that the nuts and bolts no longer fit together and that people require change when they are uncomfortable.

Lucky, lucky, lucky me.