When there is,
in this soft heart,
a tear for sweet love departed,
a tender wave of grief upon the shore;
where do these small hands go?
How do I hold
and kiss
and whisper
each precious ache
into wholeness, once more?
There is an apricot sun in the distance.
There is a mighty perfection
twinkling in the eye.
And so it is,
the ache shall be
here
and I shall know her.
Until I have known her eternal home.
As if
to fall asleep in the arms of another
could be anything less than a gift
to be cherished.
Life and her beautiful pages;
how precious she is,
indeed,
for the sweetness of it.
As the ice drips
from this frozen heart,
here grows the beauty
of feelings gone by.
How I remember you,
dear echo of friendship.
How clear it has become that
kindness
was the angel there.
He bought it in 1946 for six pounds, which apparently was quite the sum back in the day. He’s 92 and wonderful, my darling neighbour, Joe, I’ll call him. The gigantic relic of a dictionary was his. Now it belongs to me.
Joe and I lounged in his well kept living room and sipped champagne to celebrate my family’s one year anniversary of owning our home. He had remembered, not us. We were flawed with gratitude and awe.
As we sat, he told me stories of his life; the pains, the joys, stories of beautiful friends and loved ones here and gone. I could have sat there all afternoon. Instead I settled for an hour and a champagne, and two home-made yoyo biscuits (made by a dear friend of his, and absolutely delicious, might I add.)
The dictionary came up in conversation and I mentioned how I’d planned to buy a special one myself, some day. Brooke, the writer; of course she’d need to invest in something so truly lovely, full of all that writerly goodness. And just like that, the dictionary, the precious illustrated dictionary, had become apart of our family.
I will cherish it for as long as I live. Not because it’s the dictionary I’ve always wanted, but because it will remind me of a beautiful soul that has touched my life deeply.
As I sat with him I told him, ‘Joe. You have such a pure soul,’ and it’s true. I’ve never felt a person quite like him and I wish there were more people in the world who felt as beautiful, to me.
The purest of hearts. The ones that lift us to be our best. The ones we all hope we might be for others.
I plan to go for tea again with him soon, my darling friend, Joe.
I cannot think of how I might repay his kindness.
Love
the word
is not enough.
Love
the feeling
is infinite.
I wear my heart on my sleeve. I always have, I always will.
With my family here by my side on this, the great Tasmanian adventure, I’m pretty much bathing in love hearts…which is the loveliest.
That’s the thing about family.
They feel like home.
And at home I am free to be who I am, all the way ’round, back out the other side again.
It is the loveliest thing.
And they sometimes roll their eyes at my love hearty ways, and they probably think I’m a little odd, at times.
But there is always unconditional love to be found.
That’s the thing about family.
That’s the thing that fills my joy pots to overflowing.
The horrible beautiful: it is the ache our soul knows and understands as our connected truth.
What could be beautiful about war, you might ask? I ask the same question myself, every single day. It is beyond painful what is occurring in the world at this time, and so many of us would do just about anything to take the pain away from our beautiful Ukrainian friends.
Ah. You saw it there, didn’t you. The beautiful part? You saw it right there in the love.
And that is what I mean about war, how it’s both beautiful and horrible at the same time. War opens hearts by breaking them. It shows us just how important we are to each other, and it shows us just how deep our human connection goes. We grow more beautiful as a collective in times of pain.
I know few would ever ever choose war.
I would never ever choose war.
But I absolutely choose the togetherness. The signs I’ve seen all over the world declaring:
My goodness, I choose that kind of beautiful.
My goodness, I choose that for humanity.
Shine on, beautiful humanity.
We are with you, darling Ukraine.
I always thought I’d become a hermit. I saw myself in the bush somewhere, surrounded by breaking sticks and bark for miles and I was home there. No one to argue with. No one to feel too much of.
I’m not far off what I thought I’d be, I realised the other day.
I have only a few good friends.
I enjoy only the shortest get togethers before I search for the nearest exit. I like it this way. A little bit of a lot, is better than a lot of a little bit, to me.
Not that I don’t like people, quite the opposite. People can be miraculous when they allow themselves to be. When they even know the miraculous is available to them…and that’s where the hermit thing comes in. Not many people around here know about miraculous humanity.
And so I’m not a hermit, not really.
But then, I am in a way.
I always will be, but for the few I choose carefully.
And I do choose. Carefully.
And usually with love.
I tell you this,
dear present sun.
Let you shine upon my days
so I might see the light
upon every web.
Might every moment glimmer
with rainbow shine
at the very hint of forgetfulness.
For I am here to learn how to love.
I am here
to learn
how to love.
The words were simple.
A question.
A question of heart and soul.
‘If you could be remembered for one thing,
what would that be?’
What would that be?
And I knew I wouldn’t be remembered for the jobs I’d done or the titles I’d held.
I knew I wouldn’t be remembered for the degrees I’d received or the knowledge I’d gathered.
I would be remembered because I loved.
I would be remembered because I tried
(I always tried)
to be kind.
And to love in spite of it all.
brooke-cutler.com 