The introductory poetry writing class begins at 1 o’clock

sharp. The instructor’s name is Merry-- not Mary, like Mary,

Jesus, and Joseph, but Merry, like Merry Christmas, like

happy. I expect nothing less from a community college

poetry class offered only in the summer. So the skeptic in me

tunes in. Merry begins by reading us a poem by Mary Oliver.

There is an odd urgency in her voice.

You do not have to be good.

It is exactly what every beginning writer wants to hear:

it’s okay to not be used to this yet. It’s okay to fumble,

to experiment. It’s okay to let your guard down and be

wrong.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

I do not know what this soft animal wants. I do not know

what it loves, or who. Softness is something

I have trained out of my breath. Softness is what lies behind

curtains I never intend to open.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

The girl with warm chocolate eyes writes about the family she

left back home a thousand miles away. The woman who

reminds me of my mother writes about the once love that

turned sour. The boy with the crooked lenses tells us

about his loneliness. The guy who hides behind his beard

makes up for his pain with a good laugh, with biting sarcasm.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

It is, at times, hard to step into tomorrow. To accept it

as it comes. Sometimes, I fall too deeply in love with yesterday.

Sometimes, I can’t imagine a future if it looks anything like

this.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

I can see it so clearly: a gray sea, a yellowed hill, a mountain

bathed in purple glow. All of these things I have loved and left

behind. Today, the oldest student in the class

describes a canyon, or a mountain, or another sea, one that

I haven’t yet seen, one that I may never see myself. And yet,

I see it: between the four brick walls of that classroom,

it is here,

singing to us, loud and unafraid.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

And too soon we are heading home again. We are saying our

goodbyes. And those who once felt like strangers hold within

them pieces of my heart. And yet again I have fallen in love with

something that I must leave behind. But this is not pain.

There is something worth loving here, in this dimming autumn light.

Who knows

where we will go. Who knows how long each of us have left.

And perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Meanwhile

we are young.

Meanwhile

we are growing, learning, making mistakes.

Meanwhile

we are all waiting on an answer, on a name called

in the dark, on a tomorrow more golden than yesterday.