It's the time of day when most drivers have turned on their headlights, but not all. I'm headed south, Interstate-85, a few miles past the Virginia/Carolina border (perhaps you know that stretch of road, but no matter). Trees move past on both sides at highway speed, fading slowly through ever-darker shades of green.
By chance I glance up, notice a layer of minutes-before-sunset clouds at the center of the sky, lit from below, whiteness rippled by just a hint of rust, racing, (the same speed as my car, imagine that!) above the landscape I am passing through, as if pulling my vehicle along in a vortex of their creation.
And for a while I become an intoxication (relying even more than usual on my cruise control) eyes pulled skyward except for moments when I must glance at the almost-empty road ahead, considering, with some relief— though still, it seems, short of full sobriety— that no state in this nation will ever craft legislation criminalizing "distracted driving" of this variety.
September 27 - November 3, 2008
SIXTY-TWO WORDS . . .
. . . for sixty-two years. That's ten lines of six words each, plus two in my title. Not very many but I decide: Today it's sufficient, because I have reached an age when I may count how many of the words we've uttered or heard turn out to be broken, find myself more content to sit and ponder all that remains unspoken.
(September 13, 2008 was Steve's 62nd birthday)
June 10 - September 27 2008
PIECES
I decide to start collecting them with today's broken plastic arm that once pulled a chain, lifting the flapper, allowing water to flow into my toilet's bowl.
I'll include the old handle too since the replacement piece comes with another handle attached to a new brass arm. ("Good, sturdier than plastic," I tell myself.)
I can put the two old useless parts into a box somewhere, then, when whatever is going to stop working next around the house stops working I'll store its broken pieces in the same place.
Eventually I'll have enough junk to reconnect in the form of a sculpture. I'll include some new parts for toilets and other household amenities too, as well as a few items which have continued to work as intended year after year, thus earning a dignified retirement.
And when I have succeeded in cementing all of this together (the mostly old and broken, the few new, along with some still- functional-but-ready-to-rest) in a manner you would never have expected— aesthetically pleasing from as many angles as can be arranged— let me suggest that I will have created an appropriate metaphor for my life.
Perhaps, I'm thinking, for your life, too.
January 31-June 18 2008
MISSISSIPPI
In the Swamp the tupelo and cypress trees grow— some to be hundreds of years old— despite water deep enough to drown other species,
which reminds me of what we, too, must do to become poets. Photo by Marianne Hill
April 12-June 10, 2008
HORIZONS
The indigenous forest dweller who has lived an entire life among the trees, never seen a television set, backyard barbecue, or SUV will have no word in his language for"horizon." Take one of these by the hand, lead him out onto the ledge of a mountain to gaze over the top of the jungle, and he will be unable to understand, retreat, frightened, to the world he has always known.
You, who live today in a forest of televisions, backyard barbecues, and SUVs, who have never developed a vocabulary to converse about your own humanity, take my hand, walk with me out onto the ledge of this poem, where we can gaze at a horizon, that stretches beyond your imagination.
I do not know if you will believe it, but there is no need to be frightened except, perhaps, of the urge you may be feeling to retreat, back into the darkness of the jungle.
February 27-April 12, 2008
FOR A SONG
It feels like a sexual climax. Well, at least in one respect: No matter how often it has happened before, this time I am thrilled all over again.
You do not invent any chords for the mandolin or guitar. Twelve tones remain the total in our musical scale. And not a single new word has entered the English language this evening. Yet as you weave these elements together in a way I have never experienced before, that feeling comes over me: an at-peace- with-my-humanity, connected, wondering-how-you-managed- to-do-it-to-me-again and can-I-write-a-poem-to-express- the-way-I'm-feeling kind of feeling that happens when a song seems exactly right.
And, after the music, as our applause fades a question comes to mind, the same that silently I ask each lover, in the moments when my climax has receded but the heart continues to race: Just how did you manage to do that to me again?
February 10-February 27, 2008 WITHOUT STRINGS
It isn’t like the other times, when I’m standing naked in front of an auditorium, on stage, holding a flute or some other instrument I have never learned how to play, expected to perform a virtuostic concerto.
In this one I am fully clothed. And, although the musical instrument is unusual, one neither you nor I have seen before, somehow I proceed with confidence, know that I will play it well, thrill the audience with new and unusual sounds.
Yet when I turn to take it from its case, I discover that all of the strings have been removed, ask the audience to pretend with me, hold it across my body, strum the air with one hand, fingering non-existent chords with the other, hum a melody that ought to be sounding. People grow restless, start to boo, tell the MC to shoo me off the stage.
And so I awake in disgrace, later realize that this dream is simply a metaphor for the present moment, as the poet stands before you with nothing to strum but his words, each of which has had its strings removed, can never produce more than the naked hum of music which is bursting from each of our souls, aching to be shared with the world.
Life is not a dream, despite what it says in the song. And this is good, I decide, because you will probably not boo me off the stage, show a bit of sympathy for this poet— and his verse as well—offering, when we conclude, at least a smattering of polite applause.
January 31 - February 10, 2008
GREEN RIBBONS
At an open reading human beings establish a certain connection with one another, the kind that only poetry can provide: words spoken, heard, felt. At least, that’s what we strive for, though often—I have to admit— in the end it is hard to tell how well we have actually succeeded.
I come to this one with a box of green ribbons, part of a new campaign for survivors of Hurricane Katrina still scattered across the country because even after so many months there are no homes for them to return to, no jobs, no schools, and no one in an official capacity who even seems to notice anymore.
So when I get up on stage, before sharing my few minutes of poetry, I explain how I will pass the box around, ask people to take a ribbon, along with one of the fliers explaining why we are engaged in this campaign. “Put a dollar in; more if you can. The fund directly benefits survivors in New York City who are in need.”
And when the reading is over I find more dollars waiting for me than there were people in the room, am reminded of words spoken, heard, felt, decide that at this reading, at least, I have no need to wonder whether the human beings present established a certain connection with one another, the kind that only poetry can provide.
