When enough and never having it collide

on praising things that cannot last

That’s a line by poet Teddy Macker, whose book This World I spent a fair bit of time with in September. This autumn, I’m doing more with writing prompts than I have in a good long while thanks to Writing the Wild, and using that line as the start of a poem was one that was offered last month.

“What is enough?” is a question that has underlaid a lot of my work, thanks to the wise Wendell Berry calling it the most urgent question of our time. That, and a season of contributing to a collective blog¹ that explored all the nuances of what “enough” meant to each person who was involved in the project. What’s enough energy to put toward this or that? What’s enough when it comes to physical possessions, or work, or self love, or living space, or garden beds, or friends, or…..the list of what we pondered was long. Ellie and I continued mulling those ideas as that blog eventually evolved into the book 12 Tiny Things.

In our desire to be actualized and reflective people, we loved how agile and expansive the question [what is enough?] felt. Clothes, self-esteem, technology, exercise, time—we applied the question to all the nooks and crannies of our lives. As humans living in a world full of stuff, in a world that links clutter to depression—how much is enough?²

We found the question, as all powerful questions do, had no one right answer, and what is enough can shift. What’s enough in your world might be too much, or not enough, in mine. Something might be enough for awhile, and then it might vanish.

---

Here are a few of the abundant sun golds, along with some other garden gifts.

The sun gold cherry tomatoes were abundant this year. I wised up and put them inside the garden fence so they were good and protected from deer nibbles and thieving raccoons. I’ve never eaten so many—This past growing season, we’ve had them in pasta, soup, salad, as snacks off the vine, and now there are at least five bags of the little orange orbs in the freezer (though the frozen ones aren’t quite the same as fresh…). When it comes to cherry tomatoes, I can confidently say that this summer, we had enough.

Sun Gold

There are too many

of you to pick

all at once—

after all, we’re just one small family—

though I try to keep up with your abundance

your sweetness dropping

into my hands, onto the soil, bursting between my teeth,

a taste of summer

that I never used to like but do now.

Now I crave you when you aren’t here

and that makes me glad your season is short—

abundance is sweetest when bookended by desire.

For several months, anyway, they have been enough.

Then again, once the freeze comes, they’ll be gone. They never last, but I can praise them while they’re here.

---

from the book Slouching toward Radiance

I won’t claim to have any answers around what is enough, or offer a how to on praising things that cannot last—all of these questions are in the ‘unanswerable’ category when it comes to things that have a right answer. All any of us can do is continually sit with the questions and pay attention to what happens when we are okay with not knowing. The world is too much, too vast, too everything, to really have it.

Collisions of enough and never quite having it³

You can never have enough

of this world,

and that’s the trick, isn’t it?

Instead, all we can do

is see the red flowers

as they drop their petals

each one a crimson offering

a delicate gift given just once,

each one, and then they’re gone.

Instead, all we can do

is feel how sun and wind and rain

all have their own language of touch

each one a burst of tactile energy

an elemental shift given

day after day, season after season

always repeating, never the same.

Instead, all we can do

is notice the nuance

pervading all of life

each detail another thread weaving

a continual stitching (mending where necessary)

of earth’s collective tapestry.

Instead, all we can do

is wonder at how praising

things that cannot last

holds the world for us, somehow

allowing what we do have

of this world to be enough.

1. This blog that was called “Living Enough” was the foundation of what eventually became the book 12 Tiny Things.

2. This quote is from the introduction of 12 Tiny Things.

3. This title isn’t quite right, but it’s what I’ve got for now. Maybe how I want to really say it will emerge later.