“I am empowered by seeing clear to forgiving. I cut through rage and exhaustion.”

This is an affirmation penned by Jocelyn Johnson in her book on integrative medicine; I came across it several months ago. At that time, it didn’t speak to me much. When I thought of forgiveness, my mind brought up one person I’d like to reconcile with, a neighbor furious with me due to an episode with one of our dogs a year and a half ago. I tried to reconcile with her and she wouldn’t have it. I’ll try again soon. While I have no issues with her, I can see that she hasn’t seen clear to forgiving me.

Only lately it’s occurred to me that I must also forgive myself.

“What are you guilty of?”

“I’m guilty of being a human being. I would like to forgive myself for being a human being with two arms, two hands, two legs, with a shrinking memory and energy level.”

I notice the things I can’t do:

I can’t wake up as early as I used to, need lots more sleep. That means that I can’t get my housemate, who’s just 2 days after surgery, coffee as soon as she wakes up because I’m still sleeping.

I leave the leaf-cluttered culvert till the last moment, hoping it doesn’t rain.

I give Aussie shorter walks than before, especially this past winter.

I haven’t gotten back to my novel in a number of weeks.

I left a mountain of ice blocking the line to the furnace and couldn’t shovel it down for the oil delivery truck. I apologized to the driver and he said it was okay.

I don’t clean the house like I used to.

I don’t return friends’ calls promptly.

I don’t dress as well as I used to.

I try to minimize shopping trips, so I don’t shop in local stores as much as before.

I only respond to a few emails.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not overcome by guilt, it’s only that I constantly bear witness to the limits of my body, the limits on my reach. As I write this, I remember the famous lines from Andrea del Sarto: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?

Years ago I thrilled to those lines, thrilled to the confession of a brilliant craftsman who knew well the limits of what he could do (notwithstanding his fame), and envied his peer artists who didn’t have his success but whose souls burned for art: Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me.

It’s early evening, dark, a perfect time to return to Robert Browning’s poetry. A glass of red wine would go well, but it would also put me to sleep.

I witness how much shorter my reach has become, less lofty my ambition. Lofty? More like ground-level. Do the next thing is now my credo. Just doing the next thing takes me right down to the ground, not a bad place to be at all.

Where’s your poetry? I ask myself. Where’s your art? When this post is done, I will sweep the downstairs, email the person preparing my taxes with the information he asked for, study a little bit, light incense honoring the memorial date of a wonderful Vipassana teacher, Jack Engler.

I used to write poems of the heart, revise, write, revise again. Now I’m busy with life, sensing the poetry even as I live it. Did I tell you that I took Henry out along with Aussie for the first time since the beginning of winter? Ahh, spring.