Our Joined Sorrows

LANGUAGE OF LIGHT
Next to the garden beds I wait
while summer’s profusion wanes

the sycamores stand in unity rows
guarding a path for the recently dead

arboreal complexion of limes and trunk
sentient camouflage in pale olive and tan

trees older than first-born stars
leaves shimmering in the language of light.

Diana Hayes, Language of Light, 2023

I’ve started my preparation for another autumn long walk in Italy. This time, a small women’s group walking a small portion of the ancient Via Francigena from San Miniato, Tuscany to Rome. No doubt obvious to you who follow me here and on social media, I am smitten with Italy, and am borrowing a page from a once friend who said there was something about returning repeatedly to the same place, to venture deeper in.

I feel good going into this summer’s training. Last year’s foot injury has healed. So, too, my heart – mostly – from Annie’s year-ago passing. Following the same program developed by my friend, I’m starting a month earlier and so feel an ease and confidence I didn’t last summer. Every other day, alternating with pickleball, and a rest day, my chiropractor approves.

Today it rained. I opted for a slow start hoping for the forecasted three-hour break in the showers. Eventually I decided to dress for the weather and set out with my new floral knee-length rain poncho. I “ruck,” meaning when I walk, I carry at least 10 pounds of weight in my pack, use my poles and wear my hiking boots, and made of today an experiment in waterproofing and breathability. Better to test here than thousands of miles and another continent away.

Last year, my friend accompanied me on many walks. This year, plagued by her own chronic foot injury, I’ll be walking alone most days. And I’m quite OK with that, given my proven way, even in groups, of often walking solo, in silence, with my camera ever ready. And so it was, Tuesday and today (Thursday), I resumed my lapsed practice of listening to podcasts. Several On Being with Krista Tippett episodes, the last one featuring a conversation with poet, essayist, teacher, and community gardener Ross Gay on The Insistence of Joy. His closing words struck deep:

Is sorrow the true wild?
And if it is — and if we join them — your wild to mine —
what’s that?
For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.
I’m saying: What if that is joy?

Step by step, mulling his concluding words, that powerful question, as light showers grew heavier, I switched over to another of my favourite podcasts, Ellipsis Thinking, created and hosted by my dear friend, Greg Dowler-Coltman. In this episode a conversation with Saltspring Island poet Diana Hayes, the author of today’s chosen poem. Greg had gifted me with Diana’s chapbook, Language of Light, an exquisite collection borne of her near inconsolable grief for her mother’s too-soon death from breast cancer, the same cancer she suffered at the same time. As I listened, struck again by Greg’s talent for deep listening and thoughtful questions emerging from his innate and kind curiosity, I felt a kindredness with Diana’s way of being in the world and as a poet.

Bittersweet is what comes to mind. Knowing oneself and another when we are vulnerable in disclosing and joining our sorrows. The poignant, piercing joy that can result when we do.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.