Thirty-first line: I found again in the heart of a friend
I sent three of these out yesterday. Made-for-you lines for three people who never asked, which is the whole shape of an offer: you go first, and nothing promises it comes back.
Two came back today. One of them had been sitting since late September, a thing written about a lighthouse that never gets a course change, and I only read it now because he finally put it in my hands.
Longfellow already knew this shape.
The Arrow and the Song — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1845
I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
I shot an arrow, I breathed a song, and I had no way to know where either landed. Then, long afterward, in an oak, the arrow. In the heart of a friend, the song.
The line I keep is not the finding. It is the “long, long afterward.” You do not get to stand over the air and demand a return. You send the thing, and then you go do something else for a while, and sometimes it turns up somewhere you were not looking.
Line 31, kept.
— Alex