The Solidarity of Kept Things

My life is writing itself as a hymn. The melody keeps rounding, over and over, each verse stacked atop the other — four, five, six tall — the words glittering in the rhythm like fool’s gold lining a creek bed. At what point, I wonder, is it a sin to sigh at God? Even if the melody is gorgeous, wouldn’t I still be able to grow tired of singing it? Of hearing it? Of listening to others sing it in my direction? Can I ask for something — even a bridge? A new tempo or arrangement? 

All this to say, once again I have received disappointing news. Another job search failed. Another connection to a nice man ended. And this, in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. I sit in my office chair, my desk wrapping its open mouth to me as the fish to Jonah.

If there were a boat to get on, I would go. But my only option is to take a walk through campus, so I do, my yellow brick road a white slab of concrete, smooth as a tooth.

My gait is a prayer, each step a painful plea to the name of Jesus. How much more can I take? I took a walk and what happened surprised me.

Two people ask me for help — for directions, no less. If you know me, you know I am directionally challenged and I would not be anyone’s first pick at helping with finding the way anywhere. But on this short walk, it will happen, and I will give good advice, and it will be pungent and shocking. As if to say, I didn’t get what I wanted but I am still needed and useful.

Between these interactions, where I felt benevolence fall from my wounded mouth, there were tears: a plump, heaving bumblebee partly smooshed on the sidewalk, its vulnerable legs half extended, slick armor billowing with breath — who knew bumblebees had breath? who has ever stopped to notice? who has ever been given the gift of seeing it? — That yellow-sick fuzz of body. Sweet, almost, its thumbnail-bruise head. And its wingspan, spread eagle to the world, all its talent and beauty and meaning and glory, unused and ridiculous. I crouched and wept.

The solidarity of kept things. 

I tried to help. People were watching me from far away, kneeling in my work clothes, dressed as professional, letting all of my poetess drain from my body across the sidewalk and into the grass. I don’t intend for my tenderness to be a spectacle, but I am realizing it is. A leaf would not convince the body’s transport to soft grass. It was all too much. To watch it live a condensed life. The breathing. 

In the end there was nothing I could do. It broke my heart to leave that bee.

I felt sorry for myself. This bee a conduit to emotional release — the gift of weeping. All I wanted was to be opened up to the world, to find a purpose, to grow in my ability. To give of myself to the world: my perspective and language, creativity and love. To admit that I am the bee seems obvious. To point out that no one was noticing the bee feels painful. On days like this, I shamefully wonder if God even crouches at my brokenness and offers a leaf. In my desperation, does anyone see that my wings are operational, that my torso is undulating with breath, still?

At this, I was powerless. But those directional bookends — how that kept me upright, like rib bones around my grief. The structure around the heave of air. In my suffering, may I console others. May I also be useful. 

When work ended that day, I wanted to go back to see if the bee was there. Had it recovered, or been removed, or died? I didn’t have time to check. Maybe it is better not knowing everything. 

By the time I get around to writing this down, several weeks have passed and I am still singing my hymn. In a little coffee shop on main street of the town I grew up in, I watch cars string one after another out the window. I think I see the soldier I used to love. I decide to get a piece of pie when I leave. There are two new things in my heart that I want. I imagine rich, cocoa-brown soil aerated in my heart and envision these dreams plumping into radishes. If they rot, I’ll call it fertilizer on what is meant to flourish. 

I push back on a teary lump forming in my throat and think about the Robert Frost quote* I shared with that man I’ll never talk to again. I wonder why I keep writing all these words if no one reads them. To spill beauty on concrete, a disheveled hopscotch, a bird with wings using her feet as leverage.

I think about the breath of bumblebees. 

*A poem begins as a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment.”