Middling

Aug 26 2017

I have a vague recollection

of regression to the mean,

the zero-sum game

of averages.

The scorching day

followed by the balm of night.

December's dark cave

summer's lingering light.

The one you loved

who also left.

I suppose there is consolation in this,

nothing too high or low

a chance at redemption.

Except that nature is all process,

never settling

at some hypothetical steady-state.

The hurricane force

and the eye of the storm

may cancel out,

but still, destruction reigns.

Or evolution's see-saw race,

predator and prey

in lock-step,

whip-sawed from famine to feast.

Perhaps this is what Eden means;

the ideal zero-sum

of Adam and Eve

the apple, the snake,

of ignorance and bliss

and the world unchanged.

Where the young stay young

and there is no suffering

and the lion lies down with the lamb.

But where, in the absence of death

no one hears a newborn cry,

and there is no chance

at reinvention.

Stuck,

which is how I feel

most of the time.

And will probably end up middle-aged, and little done;

muddling through, as usual.

So I sigh, and accept my mediocrity.

The fantasies

I dare indulge;

the paralyzing fear

I will fail, and be judged.

This poem began with the smell of autumn in the air. August 26 is awfully early for this, I know. But it's been a cool wet summer, the ferns are already turning brown, and the last three nights have been very cold. I was thinking about how far north we live, and how as you ascend latitude, the lengthening summer days are so exquisitely balanced by equally lengthening winter nights. It's as if the easy summer exacts its payment: a zero sum game, where regression to the mean is the law. This struck as a promising approach to a poem about the change of season, the kind of poem that can so easily slip into predictable cliche.

As usual, of course, the writing gods took over from there. The best way I can describe this process is as a kind of critical stream-of-consciousness: like taking dictation, as the words mysteriously appear; but at the same time listening and shaping the piece. That it ends up as melancholy, self-critical, and defeatist as it does says something about the stenographer. ...But that, as always, is up to the reader to decide.

(I hasten to add that I'm not looking ahead to middle age; I'm more and more looking back! On the other hand, who says this is autobiography? And anyway, one is always allowed poetic licence, and in this case “middle-aged” has the perfect connotation. I'll also point out, once again, my curious penchant for Biblical references: odd, I know, coming from a fundamentalist atheist such as me!)