Open Doors

I'm currently reading Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." Wow, what an eclectic book, full of sadness and craziness and things we can hope to understand. He tells us, through one of his characters, "So many people enter your life! Hundreds of thousands! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!" This struck me. I hope it strikes you too. We can't always keep those inside the door with us, even if it's just one fast move or I'm gone, even if a sudden moment of clarity explodes right in our faces and we think we know exactly who and what we need. (A movie I'd like to see, by the way, One Fast Move or I'm Gone. And a great soundtrack, too, check it out).

The picture on my computer desktop is one I took of the North Fork of the Blackfoot River as it flowed cold and sharp out of the mountains in Montana. The water is gin clear, and only thing clear about the river is that we're out of gin. Every time I look at it, I think I see trout lying in the lee of boulders. Perhaps I'm just seeing rocks beneath water. But I don't think so. Rocks beneath water, and rocks made of water, and the water moving over the rocks, can these things also be like trout? And these fish, can we hope to keep them inside of our door? To entice them over the threshold, to remain with us more permanently than the thousands, millions even, who pass in and out in a lifetime. How do we do this? In memory, I suppose. Norman Maclean reminds us that "Nothing perfect lasts forever, except in our memories". Sometimes it seems that a great memory, one of the best kind, is just a starting point, not an ending. And so it is with the fish, the memories, that haunt my dreams.

Jonathan Safran Foer also comes up with this fantastic idea: You could make jewelry out of a rubber band which you'd wrap around your favorite book of poems for a year. And then you'd wear the rubber band, or give it to someone else. Poetic osmosis? In that vein, a poem:

Three Minute Poem

I don’t know how to walk anymore,

I don’t know how to remember the songs

that make up this place,

I haven’t met the

summer coolnesses, the river

pools tucked low into river shadows,

blue and black; I haven’t found the evening’s

embrace, and the dusk’s soft storytelling.

I haven’t tasted

the childhood sadnesses, color of

wet tarantula dust,

but I’ll try anyway, with my

three minute poem.

I’ll write to tell you of the tender moments,

watching the evening sleep,

revealing the small and infinite spaces in our hearts

I will hint at the truth of

my love river’s quiet moments,

midnight kissing in midnight valleys.