To live in the layers

Rainy days leave me pensive, and to settle my mind, I decided to read some poems I hadn't read in a while. Stanley Kunitz came to mind. I hadn't read his work since last summer, when I was visiting my brother in Illinois. It'd been about a month just after Kunitz had passed away at age 100. What a life he must've led. His later poems were very self-reflective, and I can only imagine the emotional and physical journeys he took. The beauty and sadness he experienced. Regret, loss. But he had his gardening, and his writing. Perhaps you need little more than that to find a measure of optimism, even if you're aware that change and emotions are agonizingly beyond your control.

"The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.