We’re going to have to find ourselves beautiful.
It will involve libraries
Of country music,
Not the genre
But the possibility,
A matter of opening
Again and again
The Book Of What Happened,
Of learning to savor the sighs,
The incomplete sentences,
Of other people,
To view with imagination and deep affection
Our addiction to love,
Our only hope,
We might as well face it,
And with impossible-feeling dysfunction
Drawn into the circle of song,
Dragged into the space of the talkaboutable,
The plainspeak, the ancient candor,
That knows, always knew
That there are no unrelated people,
That every fact is a function of relationship,
That the whole world’s kin,
That I am because we are.
My family did not include within the talkaboutable the death of my dad's mom in the midst of her teen son's delinquency and addiction. My dad was two years younger than his troubled brother. She took her own life 30 years before I was born. I carry 25 per cent of her DNA. I wish I would have known her.
Beautiful.