This Is What You've Been Waiting For

april sky

It's getting warm again. I took a real slow walk up a steep hill while listening to a podcast of Krista Tippett interviewing the poet Marie Howe, part of a series ("On Being") that a friend only recently turned me onto, and I'm so glad she did. In the last few days I've listened to fascinating conversations with Thích Nhất Hạnh, Studs Terkel, astrophysicist Janna Levin, and today this remarkable poet who seemed to be getting to the heart of everything important.

Here's a poem she recited called "The Gate", written after the death of her brother. I think it's perfect...and I hereby aspire to be more fully aware of the this, although I acknowledge that listening to a podcast while out hiking may be somewhat contradictory.

Then again, maybe having a poem in my ear was part of my walk's very this-ness.

I had no idea that the gate I would step through 
to finally enter this world 

would be the space my brother's body made. He was 
a little taller than me: a young man 

but grown, himself by then, 
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet, 

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold 
and running water. 

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me. 
And I'd say, What? 

And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich. 
And I'd say, What? 

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.