Held in place

For What Binds Us

by Jane Hirshfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.



I seem to be held by these forces.  The scar tissue that stitched Gil's and my lives together ties me to old ways of caregiviing, managing, indulging. Habits, inertia,  I'm having a hard time changing these patterns, for good or for ill. The bond I feel with the farm, family, friends keeps me rooted and nourished , it sustains me.  And held to the way I've been.

I don't know what is next, but I feel more as though the decision has been made and no one has informed me.  I am listening for the urge for something more and to what the forces are, which hold me to this past, (I don't want to be dismissive; this "past" may well be the rest of my life).  If I can't sense and then name what  keeps me so rooted, how will I ever become aware of what new lives I may have yet in this lifetime, and be able to let go and step into them???