My friend and I snickered the first time
we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man,
call himself honey, with a hand placed
over his heart to illustrate how we too 
might become more gentle with ourselves
and our runaway minds. It’s been years
since we sat with legs twisted on cushions,
holding back our laughter, but today
I found myself crouched on the floor again,
not meditating exactly, just agreeing
to be still, saying honey to myself each time
I thought about my husband splayed
on the couch with aching joints and fever
from a tick bite—what if he never gets better?—
or considered the threat of more wildfires,
the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream,
then remembered that in a few more minutes, 
I’d have to climb down to the cellar and empty
the bucket I placed beneath a leaky pipe
that can’t be fixed until next week. How long
do any of us really have before the body
begins to break down and empty its mysteries
into the air? Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.

-James Crews

Notes & Analysis

This is a poem of innocence and experience, among other things. As a young man, Crews snickers when he hears a meditation teacher “call himself honey, with a hand placed / over his heart to illustrate how we too  / might become more gentle with ourselves”.

By the second quarter of the poem, Crews finds himself doing the same thing he once laughed at his teacher for doing. He is older now, and has been exposed to the pain of life. Especially inescapable pain, such as climate change, an apparent case of lyme disease (which often returns even after treatment), and even the leaky pipe “that can’t be fixed until next week”.

Paradoxically, life’s pain has softened him and given him the chance to live from his compassionate heart at least as much as his cynical mind.

He is crouched on the floor, “not meditating exactly, just agreeing / to be still”.

Gone are the fancy preconceptions about meditation that we can imagine he had when he signed up for that class as a young man. Now, he has decided to simply “be with.”

He has realized that he cannot escape pain. He can simply be present with it.

As Pema Chodron says, “The only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn’t continue to rule your life.”

Crews’ journey is not one of abandoning the cynical mind. He describes feeling “the touch of my own hand on my chest / like that of a stranger, oddly comforting / in spite of the facts.” He has not forgotten the facts, nor his skepticism. Yet he is no longer guided solely by those things, either. He has found a greater force within him – one that he allows himself to surrender to now and again.

This deceptively simple poem tells us so much. About how to face pain gracefully. About the journey of growing older. About the messy unknowingness of true wisdom.

It is easy to read a poem. It takes courage to allow a poem to change us. But that is what Crews invites us to do, if we have the courage to let down our guard just a bit when we are alone with ourselves. Perhaps even whisper, Honey.