Meet me "in those dark halls of honey"

On doing it differently this time around.

Several days ago, as I was flipping through Mary Oliver’s Dream Work, her poem “The Moths” knocked me back in my chair. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, especially as this day — Inauguration Day — approached. I’ll share it with you here, followed by my reflection on it.

White Moth with Black Spots by Will Szal

THE MOTHS

By Mary Oliver

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers, it does,
in the daylight,
in mid-May,
in the forest, just
as the pink moccasin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

Finally, I had noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.

At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.

---

The first time I read this poem, I broke into sobs when I got to this part:
If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

I felt it so deeply in my soul — the unbearable pain that comes when you allow yourself to really be still and consider the possibility that the world can’t be saved.

I thought about my own whirlwind of activity set off by Trump’s first election eight years ago. The frantic pinging from noticing to noticing, flinging myself from catastrophe to catastrophe because maybe my effort alone could save this world.

I thought if I could become a human perpetual motion machine maybe that would protect us all from unbearable pain.

But then I got to this line:
You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.

I burst out laughing. Oh, that’s right! I’m not much! What a relief!

And anyway, there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, human or otherwise.

I have thought of this poem every day these past couple weeks. Every time, I think to myself, “You aren’t much,” and I grin like Mary did and feel a warm wave of truth wash over me. It is not my personal perpetual motion that keeps the world spinning.

Before reading this poem, I had never heard of a moccasin flower, so I decided to look it up. Also called “pink lady’s slipper” or “Venus’ slipper,” this is what it looks like:

Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule) photo by Joshua Mayer

I KNOW, RIGHT??? Mother Nature in all her glory.

Native Americans used the moccasin flower to ease menstrual cramps and labor pains, and European colonizers created tinctures from the flowers that relieved anxiety and insomnia and especially “hysteria” in women. (I’ll save my “hysteria” rant for another day.)

Moccasin flowers are extremely slow-growing — it can take eight years from seed to blossom. (As I type this, I’m suddenly struck by the parallel between my own seed moment as an activist exactly eight years ago and how I’ve blossomed since. My speech at this past weekend’s Austin Women’s March touches on my story.)

Partly because of their extremely slow growth and partly because of natural fire suppression these flowers are under threat, and it is not recommended that we pick them.

But the white moths have every right to seek ease inside the moccasin flower, to take a break from burning brightly, to rest.

If a moth, which only lives a few weeks, can pause inside the dark halls of honey… can’t I?

This time around, I’m still going to be doing the things. Organizing, educating, imagining, speaking out, building, connecting. Burning brightly when it is required of me.

But I’m also going to take breaks from pinging between the cold halls of power to lie down in the dark halls of honey.

Because the earth can be saved, but not by a few of us doing too much. The earth will be saved by all of us doing what we can, resting when we can, and being honest with ourselves and each other about what is called for in each moment.

Sending you love, peace, and balance as we enter this new era, friends.

<3