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Angel of the Get Through
Apr. 16th, 2020 06:28 pmI have made no secret of my love for the poetry of Andrea Gibson. I think their poems are lovely and heartbreaking and inspirational. I've been rereading and thinking about their poem "Angel of the Get Through" a lot recently and it helps to think about the friends that are checking in on me day after day, week after week. Maybe it will help you.
If it helps you to listen to poems instead of reading through them, you can listen to it in a video here.
"This year is the the hardest of your whole life.
so hard you cannot see a future, most days.
The pain is bigger than anything else.
Takes up the whole horizon, no matter where you are.
You feel unsafe, you feel unsaved.
Your past so present you can feel your baby teeth.
Sitting on the couch, you swear your feet don’t reach the floor.
You keep remembering the first time you saw a bird’s nest
Held together by an old shoe lace and scraps of a plastic bag
You knew the home of a person could be built like that
A lot of things you’d rather throw away
You keep worrying you’re taking up too much space.
I wish you’d let yourself be the Milky Way
Remember when I told you I was gonna become a full-time poet
And you paid my rent for three years?
Best Friend,
Angel of the get-through.
All living is storm chasing.
Every good heart has lost its roof.
Let all the walls collapse at your feet,
Scream "timber" when they ask you how you are.
"Fine" is the suckiest word. It is the opposite of HERE
Here is the only place left on the map
Here is where you learn laughter can go extinct
and come back
I am already building a museum
For every treasure you unearth in the rock bottom
Holy vulnerable cliff
God mason, heart heavier than all the bricks
Say this is what the pain made of you
An open, open, open road
An avalanche of feel it all
Don’t ever let anyone tell you, you are too much
Or it has been too long
Whatever guards the feet of the bridge of a song
you are made of that thing
That unbreakable note
That photograph of you at five years old,
the year you ran away from school,
because you wanted to go home.
You are almost there.
You are the same compass you have always been
You are the same friend who never left my side
during my worst year
You caught every tantrum I threw
with your bare hands
chucked it back at that blood moon
said "it's okay, everyone’s survival looks a little bit like death sometimes"
I wrote a poem called “Say Yes” while I was cursing your name
For not letting me go.
Best friend, this is what we do.
We gather each other up.
We say, the cup is half
yours and half mine.
We say alone is the last place you will ever be.
We say tonight let's just stay inside reading Pema Chodron
while everyone else is out on the town
Pema will say, “only to the degree we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation
can that which is indestructible in us be found”
You’ll say Pema is so wise.
And I’ll say yes she is, and we are too.
Angels of the get-through. We are too."
If it helps you to listen to poems instead of reading through them, you can listen to it in a video here.
"This year is the the hardest of your whole life.
so hard you cannot see a future, most days.
The pain is bigger than anything else.
Takes up the whole horizon, no matter where you are.
You feel unsafe, you feel unsaved.
Your past so present you can feel your baby teeth.
Sitting on the couch, you swear your feet don’t reach the floor.
You keep remembering the first time you saw a bird’s nest
Held together by an old shoe lace and scraps of a plastic bag
You knew the home of a person could be built like that
A lot of things you’d rather throw away
You keep worrying you’re taking up too much space.
I wish you’d let yourself be the Milky Way
Remember when I told you I was gonna become a full-time poet
And you paid my rent for three years?
Best Friend,
Angel of the get-through.
All living is storm chasing.
Every good heart has lost its roof.
Let all the walls collapse at your feet,
Scream "timber" when they ask you how you are.
"Fine" is the suckiest word. It is the opposite of HERE
Here is the only place left on the map
Here is where you learn laughter can go extinct
and come back
I am already building a museum
For every treasure you unearth in the rock bottom
Holy vulnerable cliff
God mason, heart heavier than all the bricks
Say this is what the pain made of you
An open, open, open road
An avalanche of feel it all
Don’t ever let anyone tell you, you are too much
Or it has been too long
Whatever guards the feet of the bridge of a song
you are made of that thing
That unbreakable note
That photograph of you at five years old,
the year you ran away from school,
because you wanted to go home.
You are almost there.
You are the same compass you have always been
You are the same friend who never left my side
during my worst year
You caught every tantrum I threw
with your bare hands
chucked it back at that blood moon
said "it's okay, everyone’s survival looks a little bit like death sometimes"
I wrote a poem called “Say Yes” while I was cursing your name
For not letting me go.
Best friend, this is what we do.
We gather each other up.
We say, the cup is half
yours and half mine.
We say alone is the last place you will ever be.
We say tonight let's just stay inside reading Pema Chodron
while everyone else is out on the town
Pema will say, “only to the degree we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation
can that which is indestructible in us be found”
You’ll say Pema is so wise.
And I’ll say yes she is, and we are too.
Angels of the get-through. We are too."
