Two weeks into “stay at home” orders in Kansas City, and I was adjusting to homeschooling. I looked forward to literature days. I could help with that easily. My daughter handed me a poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” by Langston Hughes. Her class was having a lesson in allusion. I had never heard of the poem. It was instantly breathtaking.
I remember reading the first long line and feeling the need to sit down. As I approached the middle, I needed to start all over again because it still wasn’t reaching its gravitas by simply internally re-viewing it. It needed to be spoken aloud. “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.” The acknowledgement of every era in one line. The poem cascaded over my dining room table just as the sun was setting and the light hit my white walls sending all up in orange. Lines made by windows, angles cutting sharp over shadows. Dust made as visible stars turning over in space.
I’m not sure without COVID-19, I would have ever slowed down enough to feel grateful to read a poem aloud in my dining room. I would have wondered how long it was going to take to get the homework done, to get the dinner ready, to get the bedtime rolling, to get 45 minutes of cleaning up and then washing face and then to bed myself. I would have panicked, because reading a poem was taking away from what I had to do. It still does, and the above is a constant crush of expectations on my mind at all times. But also forever in my mind, will be this one moment of glorious poetry spoken in my house as the sun kissed and blessed the whole moment.
What if it really is all about noticing? Just noticing, when everything is all right. I can hold on to that celestial moment and be grateful about it without focusing on it being temporary. It doesn’t bother me that it’s not something I can hold onto, or that it gets in the way of my worrying about finances and the virus and rent and bills and all the other things I could worry about to tarnish any moment awaiting me during any given day on lockdown. What if it was just enough to notice that I was able to see things exactly as they were, and find them to be utterly beautiful, not found wanting for anything more or less? Could I judge myself a warrior then?
I have often found that journeys of enlightenment aren’t really about the divine highs and suffering lows, those are the juicy bits, but the real living, the day to day is about finding stasis. It’s about how to live between the entrances and bows. As Hughes’ describes the cities, civilizations and lands the rivers have traversed, to be witnessed by the ancestor, his bond with the Mississippi speaks of a mothers might, “I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.” It wasn’t lost on me that a part of the sunset I was witnessing and feeling, was a part of the same sunset billions of years ago. The arc of the star that feeds us has risen and set countless times. Yet, when we notice it, it takes forever.
I was also aware that, as a woman, my body bears witness to this domestic existence. That my body, eyes and mind are a part of a great legacy, bending back thousands and thousands of years through the DNA, with mothering and household duties and cooking and cleaning and managing and child-rearing and child-birthing, that I could look back on the eons and eras and feel closer than ever to what came before me. The stillness and ponderings made ripe in my mind were held in the “bosom” of this sunset, this house and this moment. Hughes knew rivers. I knew houses.
My soul has grown deep with all the houses. Just a moment, noticed in this stillness we are required to observe. Just a moment, and yet it contained every era of every turning of the sun. Just a moment and I saw it, felt it and let it go. Never made less by its fleeting. On the contrary, made full by its presence. Here’s to noticing.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
I’ve known rivers.
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers.
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
by Carrah Quigley