I remember the nights when sleep felt like death
and I couldn't decide if that's what I wanted.
Isolated from all that I wanted to love,
those winter nights felt haunted.
Sleeping alone in bed next to her
I could hear the wind outside.
Or alone in my car in a hospital parking lot,
I could feel the wind blow through me.
I was tired of life, but afraid to die;
I loved, I hated, and I feared.
I remember this well, look inside me and see
I was surprised by my own fear.
But you are the dawn
and you are my home.
I could go away, sail across the sea.
I could live on an island far away.
It's a strange place but I'm learning to live
with the weight of bright sadness.
What is withered in me will flower again
and all my illness be made well,
and what is flowing and wasting away
will regain its shape again.
For you are the dawn
and you are my home.
This is a song I wrote recently for my friends J, T, and B - though it uses some of my own history and much of my own thought. The concept of "bright sadness" seems paradoxical, maybe. Is there such a thing as joyful mourning? Or bitter joy? Melancholic celebration? It's a truth that seems to defy logic. And it's a phrase found in the writings and prayers of many in the Orthodox church, especially during this season of Lent - a time of reflection on both suffering and death as well as hope and renewal.
I've also cribbed, somewhat, from the Confessions, of Saint Augustine - from IV. 6 and IV.11 in verses 3 and 5 respectively. For, as Augustine himself wrote, "often... while turning over haphazardly the pages of a book of poetry, one may come upon a line which is extraordinarily appropriate to some matter which is in one's own mind, though the poet himself had no thought of such a thing when he was writing..." (Confessions, IV. 3 - translated by Rex Warner 1963)