A Day of Shredding...

APRIL 14, 2007

I have so many things I want to post about...
Hawaii, the woodpecker condo,
my Sphinx lesson that I'm soooooo behind on!
But Monday,
the shredding truck is coming
and finally, I decided to do it.
My graduate school records,
that filled three file boxes,
are gone, into the recycle went reams,
and reams, and reams of paper...

and years of chaining myself to the computer
to rewrite nature and earn my Ph.D.

As some of you know by now...
I don't easily let go... but this felt so good and so right...
I did find a few things worth saving,
precious photos, a couple of papers from before
the dark night of the soul endless maze of dissertation writing...
And this poem,
written by Mary Oliver,
given to Kimberly by one of our beloved administrators,
who didn't stay long...
tumbled out of one of the many folders...
I wept when I read this,
and that too felt as good as letting all the papers go...
_The Return_
_by Mary Oliver_

_The deed took all my heart._
_I did not think of you,_
_Not 'til the thing was done._
_I put my sword away_
_And then no more the cold_
_And perfect fury ran_
_Along my narrow bones_
_And then no more the black_
_And dripping corridors_
_Held anywhere the shape_
_That I had come to slay._
_Then for the first time,_
_I saw in the cave's belly_
_The dark and clotted webs,_
_The green and sucking pools,_
_The rank and crumbling walls,_
_The maze of passages._
_And I thought then_
_Of the far earth,_
_Of the spring sun_
_And the slow wind,_
_And a young girl,_
_And I looked then_
_At the white thread._
_Hunting the minotaur_
_I was no common man_
_And had no need of love._
_I trailed the shining thread_
_Behind me, for a vow,_
_And did not think of you._
_It lay there, like a sign,_
_Coiled on the bull's great hoof._
_And back into the world,_
_Half blind with weariness_
_I touched the thread and wept._
_O, it was frail as air,_
_And I turned then_
_With the white spool_
_Through the cold rocks,_
_Through the black rocks._
_Through the long webs,_
_And the mist fell,_
_And the webs clung._
_And the rocks tumbled,_
_And the earth shook._
_And the thread held._