Walking the Wall

from A Life for a Life by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

    Oh, the comfort—

    the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—

    having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,

    but pouring them all right out,

    just as they are,

    chaff and grain together;

    certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,

    keep what is worth keeping,

    and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Thank you for that, Ralph.

I remember reading this a very long time ago in my well worn book of poetry, The Best Loved Poems of the American People. This
was my dad’s book of poetry that I confiscated when I was in seventh or
eigth grade and only gave back to him 3 years after I graduated
highschool when he bought me my own copy of it. I need only catch sight
of it on my book shelf and some cadence of a poem will slip to mind.
The funny thing is, I don’t often remember verses of poems, my memory
isn’t good for that –I will remember, though, the cadence of a poem
more often than the words–though there are a few that always come to
mind: “She
walks in beauty like the night,” “Day is done and darkness falls from
the wings of night,” “Happiness is like a crystal, fair and exquisite
and clear…” I love that one. I remember my dad reading to us when we
were kids, for the most part I remember him reading The Hobbit,
and some book about a boxer back in the days when the railroad was
being laid down out west, I’ll have to ask him what book that was. But
I also remember him reading “Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight”! I would lie
awake and night and see that small woman who was so determined to save
her lover that she grasps the giant bell clapper and refuses to let the
bell ring that will toll her lover’s death:

Shall she let it ring? No, never! Flash her eyes with sudden light,
And she springs and grasps it firmly: “Curfew shall not ring tonight”

Out she swung, far out; the city seemed a speck of light below;
She ‘twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro…

That is the stuff a young girl with an overactive imagination could live off of for days!  I have bent pages
all along the top and
the bottom of the book and it is an excersize in rememberances to look
at those bent pages and have flashes of memories that tie in with why
this particular poem or that one warrented a bent page. The one that
probably got me through many troubled times was Hold Fast Your Dreams by
Louise Driscoll. I remember many times when I felt like I couldn’t hold
on to anything good or lovely in life, that the magic was dying, dead,
or gone forever—”Hold fast your dreams”, just that line, would pop
into mind and I could hear my 16 year old voice sitting in the
backyard, looking over the field into the woods, reading this poem
outloud to myself:

Hold fast your dreams!
Within your heart
Keep one still, secret spot
Where dreams may go,
And, sheltered so,
May thrive and grow
Where doubt and fear are not.
O keep a place apart,
Within your heart,
For little draems to go!

Think still of lovely things that are not true.
Let wish and magic work at will in you.
Be sometimes blind to sorrow. Make believe!
Forget the calm that lies
In disillusioned eyes.
Though we all know that we must die,
Yet you and I
May walk like gods and be
Even now at home in immorality.

We see so many ugly things–
Deceits and wrongs and quarrelings;
We know, alas! we know
How quickly fade
The color in the west,
The bloom upon the flower,
The bloom upon the breast
And youth’s blind hour.
Yet keep within your heart
A place apart
Where little dreams may go,
May thrive and grow.
Hold fast–hold fast your dreams!