We’re human. We hurt each other.
–Wendy Videlock
As wind softens canyons
as water smoothes glass,
the days erode what is sharp
in me and grinds down
these layers of sludge
that have built up on
my shores, all these stories
that I have collected
—even believed—
as portraits of myself.
I remember reading
of a Chinese monk
who decided to rid himself
of worldly possessions.
Instead of giving them away—
for they would become burdens
to someone else—
he set his every thing in a boat
and let it drift to the middle
of the lake, where he sank it.
I would like to sink my stories
this way—heap them
into a heavy box and lock it
tight and drop it in
the deepest lake where
they could do no one else harm.
I’d like to believe
that it could be so easy
to release the burdens of the heart.
But no, it’s this slow,
wearing down, wearing down—
the sloughing of the known.
And who is that wants
to protect someone else?
As if she could control
how the world goes?
Let’s put her and her story
into the boat, push it off
and wish her the best.
Meanwhile
the days do the rest.
The return to the “wearing away” in the 2nd to the last stanza is fine strategy after the story of sinking the boat. And the rhyme of that line that introduces it, the no/slow, is nice. I must say, though, that the last stanza is my favorite, a kind of giving in to both the story and the world.
Beautiful – the shift from I to her … and the boat – what a gentle, perfect image.
“And who [it(?)/this(?)] is that wants
to protect someone else?” …is there a pronoun missing?
Stories certainly aren’t (always) benign. But we can’t discard them altogether. As Barry Lopez wrote, sometimes a person needs a story more than food and water. And Terry Tempest Williams has said,”This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.”
Alas, ’tis true: We are humans. [Our stories] hurt each other.
The closing stanza does leave the reader with a calming, mending high-note.