Love Should Grow Up Like a
Wild Iris in the Fields
Love should grow up like a
wild iris in the fields,
unexpected, after a terrible storm, opening a purple
mouth to the rain, with not a thought to the future,
ignorant of the grass and the graveyard of leaves
around, forgetting its own beginning.
Love should grow like a wild iris
but does not.
unexpected, after a terrible storm, opening a purple
mouth to the rain, with not a thought to the future,
ignorant of the grass and the graveyard of leaves
around, forgetting its own beginning.
Love should grow like a wild iris
but does not.
Love more often is to be found in kitchens at the dinner hour,
tired out and hungry, lingers over tables in houses where
the walls record movements, while the cook is probably angry,
and the ingredients of the meal are budgeted, while
a child cries feed me now and her mother not quite
hysterical says over and over, wait just a bit, just a bit,
love should grow up in the fields like a wild iris
but never does
really startle anyone, was to be expected, was to be
predicted, is almost absurd, goes on from day to day, not quite
blindly, gets taken to the cleaners every fall, sings old
songs over and over, and falls on the same piece of rug that
never gets tacked down, gives up, wants to hide, is not
brave, knows too much, is not like an
iris growing wild but more like
staring into space
in the street
not quite sure
which door it was, annoyed about the sidewalk being
slippery, trying all the doors, thinking
if love wished the world to be well, it would be well.
Love should
grow up like a wild iris, but doesn't, it comes from
the midst of everything else, sees like the iris
of an eye, when the light is right,
feels in blindness and when there is nothing else is
tender, blinks, and opens
face up to the skies.
~ Susan Griffin ~
(Like the Iris of an
Eye)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Love_Should_Grow.html
The author of more than twenty books (most recently What Her Body Thought), Susan Griffin has won dozens of awards for her work as a poet, feminist writer, essayist, playwright, and filmmaker. Her book A Chorus of Stones was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of an Emmy, a MacArthur Grant, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a frequent contributor to Ms. magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and numerous other publications. She lives in Berkeley, California.
3 comments on Susan Griffin ..Like the Iris of an Eye
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Maybe sometimes it doesn't, maybe many times it doesn't, but I think we should hold on to another thought: sometimes it does. A iris heart blooming, open to the sun, is full of possibilities. Beautiful ones!
My perspective also, and poetry has many moods and I like reading some different folks point of view.
My garden is blooming, so is yours.
Best EYES to you ....Like the Iris of an Eye
I have an iris within me, so there is a sometimes love is growing in the iris, but because I am a human, sometimes the love is as a rose, or a tree, or a drop of rain, or a baby's cry, or a fine cloth fabric or, yes, as an angry or silly or tired woman. When I'm angry though, there's still love, like a lion would be...silly, like the silk off an ear of corn...tired, like fog. If anyone can have love in them and growing as a daffodil, or a caterpillar, or a snowflake, or a shooting star, then they have exactly as the love that grows in an iris.