Opening
I entered this world not wanting
to come. I’ll leave it not
wanting to go. All this while,
when it seemed there were two doors,
there was only one—this
passing through.
Tess Gallagher from Is, Is Not (Graywolf, 2019)
On this
day two years ago, I sat at this
window and wrote about hummingbirds:
Every autumn, the leaves break loose.
Hummingbirds pass through Texas.
Ruby throats and emerald backs
carry no knapsack, fly
low to the ground, eyes
open for nectar in sips
from cool-pillared plant
whose water transpires
stem— water, not held
but passed through,
evaporated for another use.
Holding won’t transform.
Holding won’t renew
but the passing through.
A plant doesn’t use 95% of the water it absorbs, losing most of it through the process of transpiration. Water moves through the plant from root to stem to leaf and then evaporates into the air. This enables the plant to stand upright. This cools the plant and carries nutrients to every part of the plant. Without this loss, the plant wouldn’t live.
Is this loss, for water to leave, for it to enter one door and exit another?
Or is it a process making us alive?
I showed this poem to a friend. He said,
“Your poem implies a plant is transformed as water passes through. But how is water transformed as it passes through plant?”
Water. How is water transformed? Who cares about water? Who cares about what moves through you, whether sadness or love or anger or fear?
Water.
Water changes as it moves across plant’s inner landscape.
In its journey from soil to leaf, water begins as liquid, expands to vapor.
Water spreads and speeds, vibrates, literally, with higher energy.
Water passes into cloud where it collects dust,
until cold air presses back into liquid,
until it descends again to ground,
having gathered for plant friends
care packages of nitrogen
from the upper atmosphere.
I think of this as I lose a marriage of 17 years, as we sign paperwork to make it official.
I am losing 95% of what I thought my life would be.
Is it loss, for love to leave, for it to enter one door and exit another?
Or is this love’s process, the passing through?
I once lived like holding made love alive, made love endure, as if love were a death-grip rigor mortised by certainty and cold will. To have and to hold, from this day forward, til death do us part.
What if love is not for us alone, never meant to have one form? What if love is meant to pass through? What if this enables us to stand upright and carries nutrients to every edge of our selves?
What if love is transformed —not destroyed, not lost, but changed in form—
what if we transform love when we let it pass through?
I look out my window at the wilting vitex, the one wise enough not to hold onto anything too long, the one who drops her leaves every winter and returns with purple fronds every spring. The one who says, let what love you felt, what love was real, what love I witnessed from my side of the window, let 95% of it take a new form. Let it. Let it. You have a choice. Let this become vapor and raincloud, stream, and grounded spring. Let this become drinking water, nectar, the remnants of dog kisses, the blood of your grandchild, see what this will be if you let it. Let it. Let it, child daughter mother sister friend, let this pass through.
I walk outside and kneel. I let my tears drop into her roots.