pull up a chair

i promised some iteration of a summer reading club, as in the days of yore when a little card at the public library was slipped in an envelope and marked with an empty grid, and for every book i slipped off the shelf, carried home to devour, the lovely librarian rewarded me with an ink-stamped icon of summer. an ice cream, a fish, a globe of the world. a deep-sea diver. each, a trophy for tucking myself away in the summer’s quiet, blocking out even the buzz of the vexatious mosquito, and turning page after page—finding myself in the big woods, the little house on the prairie, mary’s secret garden, or robert louis stevenson’s pages and pages of rhyme. 

to garner an ink-stamp for adventuring away, for riding the winds of farflung imagination, was over-abundance defined. the reading, the being carried away, the learning to trust the deep powers of my mind’s true colors, that was the abundance. the gift. the one i’ll never surrender. 

ever since those bicycling-to-the-library summery days, for me the span between the last and the first school bells of the year has long been synonymous with hours unspooled within the wingspan of a book. 

the world we live in today doesn’t always require wingspans. sometimes what beckons us is flat on a screen and glows space-age eerie against the darkness. sometimes the words that stir me most in a week are words i’m able to copy and paste, words plucked from the cyberletters that waft my way. 

and in those cases, this summer reading club might become more of a book report club, in which i bring to the table the one single snippet that most caught my breath in the week. this week it’s one single poem. a poem from one of my true lifelines—andrea gibson, the queer activist and poet with an ovarian cancer deemed incurable two years ago. she reminds that though the soul is my true work in progress, the thing i pray is alive into the forever, in whatever form that will be, the vessel into which it’s been stuffed is mighty miraculous too. 

i’ve never quite given my physical being enough credit. i’ve not paused to marvel at many parts of it, save for the five digits extending from each palm, gobsmacked at however that ingenious appendage was wholly imagined, evolved. that we can pick up a slip of paper, or a rose petal fallen to the ground, that we can hold the hand of the one we love, or the stranger whom we know is afraid, is trembling, is nothing short of divine genius. 

the priest who along with a rabbi amid our tiny city garden was blessing our newborn firstborn once gave a teaching focusing our attention on the genius of the elbow, a hinge without which we’d ever be at arm’s length, unable to bring a fork to our own mouths, or button our buttons, or zipper our zippers.  

it’s ironic that for as desperately as i want my old resilient heart to keep lub-dubbing, and my little air sacs to keep being my wee vital accordions, expanding and whooshing the air in and out, as much as i think of those majordomos, i forget the rest of the bodily wonders: the way eyes crinkle when they’re in the thick of a heart-melting smile; the way the tears know just how and when to fall; that stubby little toe that in fact keeps us from toppling. . .

andrea, though, as do all the best poets, makes us pause to pay attention. holy attention. to the quirks and the nooks and the crannies, the history told through flesh, bones, and sinew. and all the overlooked bits: the loose tooth of long ago, the goosebumps over the years, the boing in our hair we once tried to hide. andrea makes us take note of how holy, how blessed, these chipped, wrinkled, creaky old soul vessels truly are. the infinite ways our multiple parts—incidental and otherwise—have carried us through the years.

to do so, she puts the soul into the driver’s seat and allows it to look back, longingly, lovingly. and along the way, directs our attention. . .

here’s andrea:

For the Days I Stop Wanting a Body

Imagine when a human dies the soul misses the body
Actually grieves the loss of its hands
And all they could hold
Misses the throat closing shy
Reading out loud on the first day of school

Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe
The loose tooth
The funny bone
The soul still asks
“Why does the funny bone do that?
It’s just weird.”

Imagine the soul misses the thirsty garden cheeks
Watered by grief
Misses how the body could sleep through a dream
What else can sleep through a dream
What else can laugh
What else can wrinkle the smile’s autograph
Imagine the soul misses each falling eyelash
Waiting to be wished
Misses the wrist screaming away the blade
The soul misses the lisp
The stutter
The limp
The soul misses the holy bruise
Blue from that army of blood rushing to the wound’s side
When a human dies
The soul searches the universe for something blushing
Something shaking in the cold
Something that scars
Sweeps the universe for patience worn thin
The last nerve fighting for its life
The voice box aching to be heard

The soul misses the way the body would hold another body
And not be two bodies but one pleading God doubled in grace
The soul misses how the mind told the body
“You have fallen from grace.”
And the body said, “Erase every scripture that doesn’t have a pulse
There isn’t a single page in the Bible that can wince
That can clumsy
That can freckle
That can hunger.”

Imagine the soul misses hunger
Emptiness
Rage
The fist that was never taught to curl, curls
The teeth that were never taught to clench, clench
The body that was never taught to make love, makes love
Like a hungry ghost digging its way out of the grave
The soul misses the un-forever of old age
The skin that no longer fits
The soul misses every single day the body was sick
The now it forced
The here it built from the fever
Fever is how the body prays
How it burns and begs for another average day

The soul misses the legs creaking up the stairs
Misses the fear that climbed up the vocal chords
To curse the wheelchair
The soul misses what the body could not let go
What else could hold on that tightly to everything
What else could hear the chain of a swing set and fall to its knees
What else could touch a screen door and taste lemonade
What else could come back from a war and not come back
But still try to live
Still try to lullaby

When a human dies the soul moves through the universe
Trying to describe how a body trembles when it’s lost
Softens when it’s safe
How a wound would heal given nothing but time

Do you understand
Nothing in space can imagine it
No comet
No nebula
No ray of light can fathom the landscape of awe
The heat of shame
The fingertips pulling the first grey hair
And throwing it away
“I can’t imagine it.”
The stars say
“Tell us again about goosebumps.
Tell us again about pain.”
—Andrea Gibson

you can watch andrea read it here.

what might your soul miss about your beautiful body?

and before i shuffle off, happy blessed day to two true loves of this ol’ chair: amy from illinois, as she was first made known to me, and nan P, who’s been the beating heart of the tenderest, bravest moments for years beyond years. one of you passes the birthday baton to the next, and a pairing as sweet it’s hard to imagine. love to you both, and bless these beautiful days in which we dwell on the light you bring to this world. 

in a very few days, my sweet boys and i fly to the island of my dreams, the land from which i feel my ancestors calling so deeply. i’ll be in dublin when i next write. see you from there. i’ve been teaching myself irish for months, and will be meeting up with a professor of irish poetry, who mostly writes in what we’d call “old irish,” so i need to keep practicing, thus: beannachtí. (blessings.)

(these summerly trips with the boys the past few years all fall under the category “live your dreams while you can.” bless the little legs and the lungs that will carry me there…..i hope to fill those wee air sacs with the holiest breath the coast of ireland offers…)