as though i had wings

i have been thinking about love and fear a lot of late. and freedom. and how they are all woven together inside us somehow like criscrossing veins on some exotic fruit. for some reason, the image of a pomelo comes to mind. perhaps because there is so much peeling involved. so much work to get through the layers of misunderstanding and confusion and to arrive at the delicious, textured, seemingly contradictory epiphany about how these three relate. not that i have it all figured out. i think that this is a constant process. an endless peeling. and discovering. and re-discovering. i love pomelos enough to especially welcome this idea. and i also love life enough to continue to peel through both joy and pain.

i wonder if i retreat behind images of produce because i am still processing my thoughts on these matters in a manner far too subtle and personal to share here. or perhaps it is recognizing that i do not at present have the faculty to be articulate about them. a beloved friend wrote to me this week, and among her thoughts was the idea that love liberates. love frees us. (i imagine it as love providing the spaciousness to be ourselves, to be really whole. and it reminds of my thinking lately about discipline as freedom.) this same friend had written not so long ago about love and fear, noting that choosing love doesn't mean there is no fear, in fact, to choose love we have to face our fears. one of my wonderful brothers-in-law used to say "love is the absence of fear". i think i am now beginning to understand what he meant.

a line from a mary oliver poem spoke to me yesterday morning - "I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings."

it is from a poem (improbably! beautifully!) about birds on a wire. and also, grief.

ahem:

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.


- Mary Oliver