The Small Things We Learn
Older, yes, and we learn the life we make is largely made in shadows... (From the Archives)
The Small Things We Learn
Older, yes, and we learn the life we make is largely made in shadows. We could be disappointed, but we must leave something for the light. Happiness is not a season. It is a rainfall. Rain on your windows. Rain on your street. Rain when you drink coffee in the afternoon and wait or sometimes wait for another moment to end. We go on and go on. And your questions are for answers I no longer possess. I would reshape your realities, yes, and yet I have tried to wash away my own realities in a hundred different rivers of half-dreams, only to discover more stones, more of my own dirt, my own filth that no dream, half or full, can cleanse. But no, you cannot start over. We live, each of us, within our own wounded lives. What your hands, what the nape of your neck remembers lies between an unspeakable vitality and illusion. Vital, yes. Illusion, yes. Although you bend, you still notice the sun. You notice clouds in the far away of the sky. Summons are not enough. Yet on the other side of words is where the sun sets, where the herons fly, where leaves return after they vanish, where my heart once surrendered to the desert. I want them to remain, to be. Names fail us. Being is the fire of what you imagine. Breathe in the clouds, breathe in the far away of the sky. Here is a secret I have been meaning to tell you: the ocean is small.
Note: this poem first appeared on Juke in 2024.
Damon Falke is the author of, among other works, The Scent of a Thousand Rains, Now at the Uncertain Hour, By Way of Passing, and Koppmoll (film). He lives in northern Norway.
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thank you for reposting this lovely meditation on life. good reminder that the ocean is indeed small. beautiful, damon.
It's always been fascinating to me, Jung's idea of the unconscious, and how it influences so much of what we do and think. And so yes, a life made in the shadows, shadows we're only partly aware of. And consciousness is becoming aware of those shadows. Dirt, filth, I'm not so sure. Depends on the moment's perspective. There's often gold, and maybe even redemption, buried in that dirt. That last line Damon, the ocean is small. That's a killer, a koan for the ages.