Risking Delight

Jack Gilbert said it best, as poets tend to do, in his Brief for the Defense:

We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Nothing was solved this week. The sorrow and the madness continued unabated, but around here, there was music, and I said yes to joy, and today I feel fortified for the challenges ahead.  

I returned to the Ranch on Saturday and heard some of my favorite songs being sung by a beloved friend as the wind kicked up and the last of the sunlight filtered through the trembling leaves. On Sunday, there was Latin and Pan-African marimba music in the local botanic garden. Children ran around happily and people danced, and it was, as someone put it, an expression of “unadulterated joy”.

“Showing up in simple celebration and community, without artifice, opens many hearts,” said a friend in an email afterwards. I agree fully, and we are hungry for it.

Mary Oliver had something to say about this also:

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed
or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

It is perhaps a way of fighting back, and in its own way, it demands a kind of bravery and fortitude.  

“We must risk delight,” is how Jack Gilbert succinctly summed it up.  

And maybe this is a lazy blog post, but I’m taking a time out, and that’s okay. The breathtaking beauty of this world still warrants my attention, the music still weaves its magic, and I am learning to let myself drift and replenish now and then, confident that I care too much to ever be complacent.

Stay strong, dear friends. Fight hard, but laugh too, and hear the music. We’re in this for the long run.