If I Could Believe That It Belonged to Me
A reading of "The Morning" by W.S. Merwin
“Would I love it this way if it could last”
Listen to the poem in the video above and the post in the audio file below.
I have just experienced my second migraine in two days. Yesterday’s headache came on during my oldest daughter’s violin recital, for which I would prefer to have been completely present. Today’s came on midmorning, just as I was settling in to work on my current memoir project. The chapter I’m revising is, appropriately, set in a variety of basements: the actual one I played in as a child, the metaphorical ones that bring us low, like abuse and bullying and misinformed decisions and, yes, migraines.
I spent the rest of the day in our own basement, which we are in process of finishing, which is dim and cool and perfect for a day in which it is hard to love the morning. These migraines are the result of unseasonal heat in Central Virginia—upper eighties on the first day of May! People around me say, “Enjoy the nice weather!” Instead, my chronic cardiovascular condition has set in; I’ve stopped my afternoon nature jaunts and keep my painkiller handy.
These summer-like mornings were not made for me, and Merwin asks in his poem “The Morning,”
would I love it this way if I were in pain
red torment of body or gray void of grief
I don’t know. I don’t know. I want to love the mornings like I did two weeks ago, like I did all of spring until now, the birds waking up and the trees budding out and the smell of honeysuckle coming down the hill. I am writing an essay about this washing up against the boundaries of my body. I am writing a memoir chapter about the sinking in my gut when I have to say “No, I can’t” to outdoor nature experiences once the heat sets in. Once the headaches come on.
I am fighting to love the morning. I am fighting for the breathing moment, and for nature, and for my place in the wide world, even when my world shrinks to the dimensions of my basement. I am fighting to love it here, this morning, this day, despite the pain to “believe that it belonged to me / . . . that it noticed me / recognized me and may have come to see me / out of all the mornings that I never knew.”
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I'm sorry the weather has been so painful for you -- I hope the migraines subside soon!
Oh, you know this is one of my all-time favorite poems. And it seems it moves you differently than it does me, but oh, isn't that what is so wonderful about a good poem!
Sorry lately has been a rough go.
Here's my voice, lended to Merwin's words: https://meganwillome.substack.com/p/poetry-pairs-2-48a?utm_source=publication-search