Many who write about desire do so in terms of lack and longing. I certainly can feel this lack and longing, as evidenced by this poem I wrote in 2012. But is the desire only in the lack and longing – even here?
Morning Moment
It’s not quite 6:30 and I wake from a dream I can’t remember – throw my legs out of bed and turn off the not-yet-ringing alarm clock. It’s morning again.
I see a smudge of pink through the leaf patterns on the glass in the bathroom window. Opening it a crack reveals to me broken grey clouds. It’s a splash-the-face-only day.
Downstairs, dressed in a new blue top and with beads dripping from my earlobes, I know the birds are waiting for me in the garden.
Damp grass (rain last night) – apples and rose petals fallen on the ground. There it is – that longing – to enter together with another into the morning scents, the light – and delight – blurring into each other’s being within the living moment. Morning moment.
There is no one there.
Author: MaryAb
Born in upstate New York. Moved to the UK in 1971. At home in Devon.
I vividly remember this desire/ longing for the Other, or an other, to share these ecstatic moments with.
Now you have reminded me of those feelings I realise I no longer have them. Not sure why. Maybe I am dead, or maybe ‘I am’.
I am sure being with my new grandchild is will change things as I see the world through his experiencing.
I, also, no longer feel this particular longing in the same way. I think this is because I am increasingly more able to feel connection with other people.
This reminds me of somebody or other’s advice to think carefully before drawing someone else’s attention to something. That desire to ‘share’ the sight of the bird or the view from the cliff or the end of the rainbow can easily becoming something like ‘handing the experience on’ rather than having it for oneself. But I am awfully familiar with wishing there was SOMEone beside me to see that kestrel hanging, that fox sidling, that badger rolling.