When things fall apart
How many homes will I make in my lifetime?
Last week, we shared a poem from our upcoming book The Verse for Now by Jacqueline with the folks who’ve made a commitment to support us with a paid subscription. This week, I wanted to share a poem with all of you to give you a taste and feel of Jacqueline’s work. But first, a little backstory.
When my life blew up a couple of years ago, I found myself, predictably, looking to people who’d been through some shit and had wisdom to share on it: Yung Pueblo, bell hooks, David Whyte, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chödrön. These texts, particularly Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart, gave me a new outlook on what to do in crisis.
“Do nothing.”
What? How could this possibly be the answer? And yet, as I read, that was the message that emerged. What I learned, in doing nothing, was that nothing was the first step to rebuilding my life – my internal home. I have found this to be a useful lesson in the subsequent personal, political, and global crises I’ve watched unfold.
“Do nothing, and listen.”
Consider the spider: how many times has her web been destroyed? She does not emerge to fight the broom – she waits, lets the dust settle, then determines how best to build her next home.
“Do nothing, and listen. Then, something will emerge.”
We do not need to react with the first twitch of muscle, the first grimace or sigh. We have to find a way to act together to stop the genocides, famines, fires, fascism, horrors tearing our world apart, but first, we have to find a way to look around at our resources - each other - and fight the scourge of hopelessness through solidarity. Let this poem, “Home Building,” be an invitation to you.
Home Building
We work so hard to create an entire world and it burns down, floods, rots, gets taken away, taken for granted, it molds, goes to ruin. If you live, you build again. How many homes will I make in my lifetime? How many times does the ant rebuild? How many nests does the heron make? Meet the truth of fire, study the history and stay, regroup, keep trying. Carry what’s left, regrow, plant new, erect another plan. Roots are already reborn and searching. I imagine building everything from stone, hauling the rocks myself. It is our way, this cycle of all that falls to find form again. To know a house, to sit in every room. To note the weather—snow moving, seen only in the cone of streetlights. To catalogue the sounds—ice-maker, furnace, wood expanding, vents flicking open in the hard winds. So much time organizing, arranging, crafting and creating. Things to do, to move, to clean. It crushes us daily. Who dealt it? Was it the hand of god that swore in such suffering? What if I grew the straw and shoveled the mud? What if I woke up early with moonlight in my palm? It can be different even if it always leaves. We know how to make it last. We know how to make it again.
With love,
zoe & the Flower Press team