Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

After a four-year relationship dissolved, a friend, Jennifer, said, “I think you should try to be alone for a year.” She might as well have said, you should travel to Mars on a flying tricycle. “That may well work for monks,” I countered, “but you forget my need for validation and comfort is several galaxies long.” We both laughed over the phone.

She referred to abstinence as a cleansing, a restraint that results in clarity. Several years prior, she and her wife parted ways; I witnessed her beautiful recovery. She did not give up on love. She just paused on putting herself in intimate relationships that sometimes muddled her intentions and needs.

“You discover what you really want in a partner by discovering what you love about yourself,” Jennifer said. I so appreciated her counsel. But still I could not envision myself isolated from the world of possibility. See, I’ve a natural curiosity about people. It has me believe the great mystery of our existence is solved by the person we love and bring into our life.

I journeyed through several relationships before I gave Jennifer’s advice some mustard; I didn’t date for half-a-year. I needed to weather a few more storms to arrive at her well-earned wisdom, and thus, at my own pace.

Today’s poem puts us in touch with what it means to experience unadulterated joy, one that is owed to an exquisite contentment.

Gratitude
by Patrick Dundon

Today I think I am healed. I do not want 
what I do not have. Even the lover who sleeps
across town—one of my hairs trapped behind his ear—
feels near to me. Sure, my mother did not hold me enough,
too tempted by the specter of satiety only alcohol can bring. 
But I do not resent her. Even she is wild and shining
in the palace of memory, my mind’s glass castle.
Last night I woke from a dream of a terrible storm
to the sounds of a terrible storm: wind rattling the windows,
knocking branches against the roof. No one was there
to hold me, and I was happy. A little curtain of satisfaction 
fell over my face while I lay there, wanting nothing. 
Jonathan asks me to send him a poem about gratitude.
At first, nothing comes to mind. All poems, I think, 
are about lack: language’s inability to capture the real.
So I send him a poem about contentment:
gratitude’s simpler sibling, the privileged child 
who can rest on their laurels without self-knowledge. 
To thank takes work. You must risk foolishness to do it. 
In the morning, the storm had passed, only a few
sporadic clouds releasing the last of their burden,
punctuated by sun, steam lifting off the concrete.
Was I thankful for this, or was my emptiness 
merely glossed over, inoculated, fed?
I opened the curtains as wide as they would go,
inviting all the possible light. Jonathan thanked me
for the poem. We both knew it was not what he wanted.
In the end, the speaker sees birds rising up
from gnarled trees and thinks, as they fly off,
I need to go there too. When really, the birds 
should exist without the complication of need.
I tell Jonathan I will find a new poem, one
without desire, or, better yet, without birds at all.

"Gratitude" by Patrick Dundon. Used by permission of the poet.