Love Sorrow

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.

"Love Sorrow" is a poem by Mary Oliver, from the book, Red Bird, that was given to me last summer by my long time sweetheart, just as our love got lost. Funny. He is a poet, and learned to love her poems because I began to love them. Part of kissing an old love goodbye is welcoming sorrow and grief and that wounded child, too, that shows up all pouty out of the blue. Mary Oliver, whose work sustains me over and over, describes just what I have been trying to do.

What a surprise to find this poem only tonight, seven months later, in the book he gave me. Maybe that is love after all. The gift of these healing words is just that.