A few years ago I learned the difference between a labyrinth and a maze. A maze has multiple paths one can take but only one path that takes you through. A labyrinth on the other hand is one continuous, circuitous path. Both seem useful metaphors for our path through life–full of turns, mistakes, and circling back to old themes. They are valuable ways of disrupting the concept of our lives being one straight line like timelines in history books, with little hatch marks of achievement. When we believe in turns in the road, we can weather change more easily – change not unlike the shifting weather that comes with a new season. When we can see that time moves in a circle, we can ease into the cycles, the return and revolution of things. We can embrace the dissolution knowing a reforming is coming. We can make time not only for building and forming, but also for the part of life that involves rest and rejuvenation. We can face loss knowing its place in a cyclical life.
The Line to You is a Circle
This is a poem about you leaving
but first it must be a poem
about the shape of life,
so you can see why
I am not holding on to you
as tight as I can.
If we are lucky we will see at least
thirty thousand suns arch to dusk,
a thousand cycles of the moon,
take eighty or more ellipses around the sun,
orbit the center of our spiral galaxy,
while revolving through the universe.
Our bodies coded within a double helix
directing molecules created
in the heart of an imploding star.
This planet, coalesced matter, a finite supply,
cycling through birth, death, decay, rebirth,
over and over until we hold a multitude
of past lives within each round cell.
The expression of these bodies,
the language of love, is the embrace,
the encircling of arms.
What is life, what is time,
but a circle, a curve, a spiral,
an ongoing revolution?
And yet there is the graph,
the one we see at work or in the news.
It plots an ever-increasing value for X and Y.
This we are told is the purpose of our lives,
to generate that upward sweeping incline.
Project timelines plotting the way
to completion, perfection, growth.
Our team in alignment, we check off tasks,
In a carefully planned order,
achieving peak efficiency.
And we, creatures of metaphor,
start to think our life must be straight.
We grip in all the wrong places,
contort ourselves to shapes not ours
and drive a precise grid of streets
that lead the way for us. We live
by the unassuming implement: the ruler.
Yet note its name, and how we submit
to it, the tool of our age.
Wise ones walk circuitous tracks,
like the labyrinth—a coiled path—
winding its way through turns,
switch backs, a continuous but curving
path to the center—not the destination,
but simply a place to turn around.
A method of meditation,
the labyrinth is a reminder
the path we take through life is never
supposed to be anything
but a series of turns.
This may seem like a lot of explanation
for a poem about you
but it’s the only thing soothing me
as I watch you turn, taking
a tight bend I cannot see around.
Rather than grip your wrist,
wrench you back to my side,
I will trust in the seasons of things,
The phases of the moon, the dawning sun,
The labyrinthine hedges of thorn
and tangled leaf.
For if time is a circle,
then there is always a place
where we walk together
on a path that never was,
could never be,
straight.