"After Work" by Jane Hirshfield

Recently, I read the first poem in a book that's been sitting on my shelf, unopened, for a long time. "After Work" by Jane Hirshfield in her book Of Gravity and Angels. Of course the title intrigued me. “After Work.” Work isn’t a common word in the titles of poems.

I invite you to pause now and read the poem for yourself. Here’s a link to where the poem is printed. Please do click the link and read it. But don’t forget to come back. Or, if you’d prefer, click the link below and listen to me read the poem (with Over the Rhine, "May God Love You" in the background).

This poem is anchored in the the after-work space. Work is over, and it has likely consumed the mind and the physical energy of the poem's narrator. She has sat at a desk or stood at a work station or bounced here and there around other people's needs all day. Consumers, patients, customers, colleagues. Probably inside 4 walls, probably in indirect lighting, probably following a script of some sort, probably channeling from her experience and education only what is applicable to the task at hand. Eight hours later, more or less, and the work is done. Punch the time card, close down the machines, hang up the white coat, the apron, the lanyard with her name tag.

And the narrator enters the space of the rest of her life.

She enters full and whole and living space. Beauty is present. She calls to an animal, a horse, obviously known and loved. She offers a treat, corncobs. They look at each other eye-to-eye. And the universe is reflected in the horses’ eyes.
 

and in the night, their mares' eyes shine, reflecting stars,
the entire, outer light of the world here.

When I first read those last lines I nearly gasped.

During work, however you define work, our efforts are one teeny tiny piece of the whole, and here now, when work is done, is the remembrance of the whole. Here now is the need to reorient. The need to shake ourselves and remember, with each leaving of work, the immensity of the universe of which the work was a part. Shake yourself and expand. Relax your eyes and reorient to more than what you see at your desk, your work station, your register, your waiting room, your conference table. See the whole.

The reflection in these horses’s eyes is reminding the narrator and you and me to emerge from the tunnel of our days and newly re-imagine the universe in which we work and breathe and live.

~~~

[photo: early morning rabbit prints]

When you don't know what to do

I have a friend—a beloved woman, some years my senior, for whom I’m so grateful—who shares her wisdom with me from time to time. Back in November, after a difficult move of my father from his apartment into assisted living, which had been preceded by a couple difficult months, she sent me an email of encouragement. She included the words of a verse from the Old Testament, the book of II Chronicles. It’s a verse I’ve long loved, but it hadn’t come to my mind in a while.

“We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

The story of the verse is that the people of Judah were surrounded by a vast enemy army and the King didn’t know what to do. So he prayed aloud a prayer that asked the Lord for help, ending with this admittance of helplessness yet a face turned toward God.

After he had prayed, someone announced he had a message from the Lord. “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s….[S]tand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you.” Then the King and his people fell to their knees and worshipped God.

The next morning, the men went out to face the opposing army. Instead of taking up weapons, the King told them to sing praises to the Lord. They began, and while they sang, the Lord set ambushes for the invading army. The people of Judah were saved.

That’s the story in which this wonderful line is anchored. My story doesn’t match that story, and I’m sure yours doesn’t either. There’s no enemy invasion on my block, no need for marching out to battle or the setting of ambushes. Yet, life is complex and often heavy. I’m so glad my friend reminded me of this line. In turn, I’m passing it on to you.

“We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

~~~

[photo: polar bears at Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota ]

Sally Franson's "A Lady's Guide to Selling Out"

I read a fun book over the holidays. A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out by Sally Franson. A friend told me about the book, which she had read after seeing Franson on the Swedish reality show, “Allt för Sverige” (The Great Swedish Adventure; season 10), a show that features Americans of Swedish descent who go to Sweden to learn about their family histories and that I have yet to watch. But back to the book. Casey, the protagonist, is an advertising executive working on a campaign to link literary authors with products their words will help sell. The strategy is genius until it’s not. Then Casey has to find her way out and save herself in the process. 

Franson’s writing was an intriguing blend of chick-lit plotting punctuated with deep literary reflection, something I didn’t expect in a book with the cover that it had. 

For example, while attending a reading in a bookstore, Casey, thinks about what it takes to mend when you’re broken. Because she is broken, because she is mending.

“But for a second there, in the bookstore, when time spanned vertically instead of horizontally, and love was at the center of the line, I forgot all about that.

It’s so simple, I know, but perhaps all it takes to mend, in the end, is people who love you. Who find you when you are lost, who come out with a flashlight when you’ve gone too far into the woods. They call out your name, you hear it, you are reminded of yourself. They remind you. They remember you. They re-member you.

And so you return the call. You put yourself back together again. Because, my God, you love them too.”

~~~