Longing (Remember)

my mom came down this past weekend and blessed me. so loving and generous. we sat in my room and painted the worn away spots on my orange rocking chair.

We watched the Leonard Cohen moving, recalling how his voice grew me, my mom playing it in my early teens. how i started to listen over and over and his melancholy grew on me. how his worlds became ambulatory around me through college. how he unlocked rooms. listening with my mom to Leonard's interspersed songs throughout the moving, came musty rooms unlocked. Listening to my own landscape that was shaped somewhere between the lands of leonard.
tonight i am so placed by "Suzanne" between drawers and drawers of sorrow. i do not know what to do. but leonard sings me back to me and to places i've been, to my attic on Storey street, to Oregon, to home with my Mom. to days of unknown before burden and unclear hinges.

I feel this grand coming forth and holding as "Suzanne" comes tumbling out and up. this rocking sweet simple country opening, the key shifting in the beginning. the background singers "ooooohhhing"

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night beside her And you know that she's half crazy But that's why you want to be there ....
And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said "All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them" But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.


Last poetry group i almost cried when i read this wendell berry poem. the line "Pray for the Little Songs that wake and move." kept making me choke. a longing, and a knowing. that many of my little songs were being held back, or that so many so so many more could be bourne. that my soul is waiting to run and walk and discover, and i keep getting quiet or having no material to make with. all these little places waiting.



Lord tonight I pray for the Little Songs that wake and move.