Not Alone

Recently I have not been sleeping well. I am deeply concerned about the condition of the world, in particular the worsening environmental crisis. I have felt that knowledge has brought darkness into my life, and I remember lines from a poem I wrote many years ago:

The gift to know
Is a gift of woe
Do not ask that gift
Unless you are prepared to go
On a long dark journey of your soul
Without much light before you’re whole.

The last two night I awoke in the early morning hours and had difficulty getting back to sleep. Last night I had an inspiration — get up and make some eggs for myself, remembering when both Marianne and I work up in the middle of the night and we ate five eggs! My strategy of a nocturnal breakfast, along with reading a chapter from an absorbing novel, worked — I got several hours of additional sleep.

When I got up I searched for the poem using the phrase “five eggs” and immediately found it!

Not Alone

I went to bed worn out
Heavy with foreboding, full of doubt.

I woke up refreshed
Though it was the middle of the night
My wife and I, we shared some light.

Of a little food too we did partake
As if to say we won’t forsake
Our bodies as we begin
Our souls’ journey.
Five eggs we ate
(For that’s all there were.)

While yet a little girl my wife was led
To ask one gift as the words of Solomon she read
“O God help me to be wise.”

The gift to know
Is a gift of woe
Do not ask that gift
Unless you are prepared to go
On a long dark journey of your soul
Without much light before you’re whole.

When on that cold rocky shelf
I took off the sun
I thought only of myself
And the path that I must run.

But I was not alone
My wife took the sun
And stayed by my side
As hand in hand
We went down that mountain side.

Shrewsbury, Massachusetts
September 1984

Some background for this poem is contained in a chapter of a private memoir I wrote about Marianne’s life and our journey together, Chapter 12 – The White Light. From the first paragraph:

Even as a child Marianne had spiritual yearnings. Once she created a little “temple” for herself by draping a blanket over a chair, making an enclosed space. There she prayed that she might be wise like Solomon.

Later in the memoir I write about two spiritual retreats Marianne and I attended in 1984, the first on Cape Cod in May and the second in New Hampshire in September. The second retreat led to a flow of poems, written over a span of a few days. beginning with The Father and culminating with Forty-One.