So Let Us Run
As a boy I’d heard my father preach a hundred times
of being surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses.
Yet it was not until finding myself a man on a New Jersey
summer afternoon that I felt thwarted by the clouds
accentuating the peculiar and insistent nature of the sky.
It was then my father’s words were born again as
something more than letters to the scattered Hebrews.
I remember the clouds that day holding no impatience,
no indifference to my imaginings of myself as a writer.
In fact they colluded together to ensure I would spend that
summer afternoon inside my room furiously reading every
word in the book I found surprisingly face out in the petite
bookshelf on the landing of the victorian Spring Lake Inn.
There were no voices telling me to take, read. But there was
a cover the color of tired lilacs upon which was drawn a
great mountain rising above an equally great lake split by
a bridge leading in and out of a town, and resting above it
all were clouds exactly like the ones outside my window.
So I obeyed and lost myself in the lives of Ruthie and Lucille and
the tragic Sylvie, but even more so in the vast predestined
passages birthed from the mind of a woman named Marilynne. I read Housekeeping in that single afternoon and emerged from my room stumbledrunk on its aged prose and reassured in the human enterprise. Later that evening I sat alone in a bustling steakhouse surrounded by great gobs of people I felt I now knew better than before due to my time spent in Fingerbone. When my food arrived I bowed my head to thank God for my father, which I always do, and for the witness named Marilynne, and the clouds.
passages birthed from the mind of a woman named Marilynne. I read Housekeeping in that single afternoon and emerged from my room stumbledrunk on its aged prose and reassured in the human enterprise. Later that evening I sat alone in a bustling steakhouse surrounded by great gobs of people I felt I now knew better than before due to my time spent in Fingerbone. When my food arrived I bowed my head to thank God for my father, which I always do, and for the witness named Marilynne, and the clouds.
A beautiful book.
I am pleased to have a poem to accompany it.
A thought poem with yearning and thanksgiving and humanity.
Thank you
Ohhhh . . . a Marilynne Robinson novel in one sitting. What bliss.
She’s a wonder.
Love her.
Thank you, John, for this beautiful tribute. One that I gratefully echo. I read “Gilead” first, then all the rest, except the latest, which I’m saving for our anniversary trip next month. (What do you call this kind of poem? Is there a ‘type’ for this?)
Now I know why your writing reminds me of hers. You both open the reader’s eyes to the holiness of every moment of life. Thank you.