Over the Weekend, A Cloud

Coming to terms with things over the weekend, there is sadness--really enormous sadness--but also a sense of what is real. I feel that perhaps life is always about trying to see through the fabric of illusion. I was saddened by an answer this weekend; it was not the one I wanted. We all get answers like this from the universe, so it doesn't matter what it was. I felt like a woman walking barefoot through the desert today, and yet I did not feel so sad after a while. I went to restorative yoga (the type in which one is supported by pillows and blankets, as if in a cocoon). And remembered something my myth professor Harvey once replied to a student, that in the end, it is all love, no matter what. And love cannot always be quantified, which is good.



If You Forget Me

by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.