Honey and Salt (Updated)

Today my parents celebrate their 44th wedding anniversary.  44 years.

That's 44 Christmases.  88 birthdays.  176 seasons.

That's a long time.  Maybe that's why their advice is always so good.  On the inside of my parents' wedding bands are engraved the words Honey and Salt for poem of the same name by Carl Sandburg.  I guess because in life--and in marriage--sometimes it's honey and sometimes it is salt.  Or, that you have to have the salt to appreciate the honey?  I asked my parents.  An excerpt from my dad's response:

Shelby-

Why the words "Honey and Salt."  I knew that our marriage began in a non-conventional way.  I had used the poem in classes and liked the view of life it portrayed.  I guess "Honey and Salt" was an oath to our life together; that we would prevail in spite of the hills and valleys we might encounter.  I knew and know that marriage is work and that it isn't always rosy.  I understand that, like investing, one must keep his eye on the distant goal to weather the incidental, accidental and intentional interruptions a couple experiences throughout a lifetime.  I know that marriage is best if based on "truth."  I know that "truth" is not always comfortable, convenient, pleasant, absent of guilt or popular, but I know that it is necessary because living lies is devastating, counter productive and a sure way to "go down in flames."

The words serve as a preamble, an oath, a performance standard, a symbol of resurrection and rejuvenation and will undoubtedly, one day, will stand as the declaration of our love and life together.  It is simple, compact, easy to remember and has been significant to us.

Dad

Here's hoping it has mostly been honey for two of my favorite people in all my put together.

Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad.  I love you.

Honey and Salt

Carl Sandburg

A bag of tricks—is it?

And a game smoothies play?

If you’re good with a deck of cards  or rolling the bones—that helps?

If you can tell jokes and be a chum and make an impression—that helps?

When boy meets girl or girl meets boy—what helps?

They all help: be cozy but not too cozy: be shy, bashful, mysterious, yet only so-so:  then forget everything you ever heard about love for it’s a summer tan and a winter windburn and it comes as weather comes and you can’t change it:  it comes like your face came to you, like your legs came and the way you walk, talk, hold your head and hands—and nothing can be done about it—you wait and pray.

Is there any way of measuring love?

Yes but not till long afterward when the beat of your heart has gone many miles, far into the big numbers.

Is the key to love in passion, knowledge, affection?

All three—along with moonlight, roses, groceries, givings and forgivings, gettings and forgettings, keepsakes and room rent, pearls of memory along with ham and eggs.

Can love be locked away and kept hid?

Yes and it gathers dust and mildew and shrivels itself in shadows unless it learns the sun can help, snow, rain, storms can help—birds in their one-room family nests shaken by winds cruel and crazy—they can all help:  lock not away your love nor keep it hid.

How comes the first sign of love?

In a chill, in a personal sweat, in a you-and-me, us, us two, in a couple of answers, an amethyst haze on the horizon, two dance programs criss-crossed, jackknifed initials interwoven, five fresh violets lost in sea salt, birds flying at single big moments in and out a thousand windows, a horse, two horses, many horses, a silver ring, a brass cry, a golden gong going ong ong ong-ng-ng, pink doors closing one by one to sunset nightsongs along the west, shafts and handles of stars, folds of moonmist curtains, winding and unwinding wisps of fogmist.

How long does love last?

As long as glass bubbles handled with care or two hot-house orchids in a blizzard

or one solid immovable steel anvil tempered in sure inexorable welding—or again love might last as six snowflakes, six hexagonal snowflakes, six floating hexagonal flakes of snow or the oaths between hydrogen and oxygen in one cup of spring water or the eyes of bucks and does or two wishes riding on the back of a morning wind in winter or one corner of an ancient tabernacle held sacred for personal devotions or dust yes dust in a little solemn heap played on by changing winds.

There are sanctuaries holding honey and salt.

There are those who spill and spend.

There are those who search and save.

And love may be a quest with silence and content.

Can you buy love?

Sure every day with money, clothes, candy, with promises, flowers, big-talk, with laughter, sweet-talk, lies, every day men and women buy love and take it away and things happen and they study about it and the longer they look at it the more it isn’t love they bought at all: bought love is a guaranteed imitation.

Can you sell love?

Yes you can sell it and take the price and think it over and look again at the price and cry and cry to yourself and wonder who was selling what and why.

Evensong lights floating black night water, a lagoon of stars washed in velvet shadows, a great storm cry from white sea-horses—these moments cost beyond all prices.

Bidden or unbidden? how comes love?

Both bidden and unbidden, a sneak and a shadow, a dawn in a doorway throwing a dazzle

or a sash of light in a blue fog, a slow blinking of two red lanterns in river mist or a deep smoke winding one hump of a mountain and the smoke becomes a smoke known to your own twisted individual garments:  the winding of it gets into your walk, your hands,

your face and eyes.

:) sbc