Conversations in the Car

I had great company on the road today.

I'd loaded my phone ahead of time with podcasts which--along with more Leonard Cohen and other music--accompanied me on the long, otherwise-uneventful Highway 20.

Krista Tippet's show, "On Being," (formerly "Speaking of Faith") is a great source of thoughtful interviews with people of various faiths, agnostics and atheists, physicists, rabbis, theologians, novelists, artists, and musicians.

Today I drove across Louisiana and Mississippi with Rosanne Cash ("Time Traveler") and Desmond Tutu ("A God of Surprises");  the late-Rabbi David Hartman, and the late-Sherwin Nuland, physician and author of  How We Die and several other books. (See Onbeing.org if you'd like to hear these and others)

I also listened to piano music of my friend Gary Lane who died almost exactly two years ago. I was teary listening to him play, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"--which I heard him play live many times for the residents of nursing homes in San Antonio.

Thanks to technology, the voices and keyboards of so many who are no longer living among us are still very much alive.   Driving along listening to one after the other, I wondered why I so seldom make the space to do that at home.  The car is a solitary listening booth, no interruptions.

Billy Collins is not only a spectacular poet, but he's a genius at talking about poetry.  If you want to hear an interview with Diane Rhem on NPR, you can hear his resonant voice as he talks about the poem, "Aimless Love," and about poem-making.  I love this poem!


AIMLESS LOVE

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

 - Billy Collins