Passion is work/ that retrieves us/ lost stitches. It makes a pattern of us,/ it fastens us/ to sturdier stuff/ no doubt. – Jorie Graham
There are some lines of poetry that stop me in my tracks. They feel shot through with truth and continue to echo around inside me for days, months, and sometimes years. These lines are from “I Watched A Snake” by Jorie Graham (from her book Erosion). The image is that of a snake catching flies, moving so slowly at its work that the movement can scarcely be detected between the blades of grass as the snake imperceptibly vanishes and reappears. This must be perfect progress where/ movement appears/ to be a vanishing, a mending/ of the visible/ by the invisible. The snake goes where it must, driven by a desire and hunger for “small things.”
This idea of passion and hunger and desire as things that delve into the material of life to retrieve us is a powerful and moving one for me. Suddenly, I see threads in my life, very necessary life-lines, where I hadn’t seen them before. It becomes clear – I was being guided. I was being retrieved as I slithered around on my belly following what I felt like I must follow.
Passion and desire can be misunderstood, with reputations as hedonistic no-holds-barred kind of energies that can destroy people and those around them. And this can be true sometimes (as in “fits of passion”). But Jorie Graham’s poem, I believe, points to this other face of passion. The speaker in the poem names this energy as a possible guide, allowing those forgotten, starved parts of a person to come to light again.
For me, music has been one of those guiding passions – something that, when I follow where it leads, when I quiet myself into it and find a place of absorption, it gives back to me. It fuels me and I become more of myself, and more than myself. There are other focal points that provide this in my life, of course, but music looms large.
There is a moment that I wish for all of my students to experience (and it is so hard to come by these distraction-filled days): the gift of complete immersion into this very beautiful pursuit, so that they may experience the gifts that come from it. But it’s like the Baptist’s version of baptism: you have to go all in. There’s something to be said for that symbol of new life that requires a complete dunking and soaking!
Immersion into experience requires stillness, the kind found in this poem – a stopping and watching of the snake following what it must follow, slowly, disappearing into the landscape. This is what music is. This is what poetry is. This is a way to live. It is something that we can do every morning as we sit down with the instrument, or as we go about our lives, wordless and watchful as the snake (and the one watching the snake). Allowing the invisible to re-stitch the visible, fragmented self back together, right into this moment.
Read the entire poem here: Jorie Graham’s “I Watched A Snake”.
