Second Hand
May 20 2018
Things
accumulate.
Like
the way, in the vastness of space, small chunks of rock
gravitate
into clumps
then
accrete into bigger ones,
until,
in the fullness of time
a
planet is born.
And
then, how things become fixed;
accustomed
to
this thing in its place
as
if it had always been thus,
an
immovable object
decreed
by nature.
The
familiar landscape of home.
Which
the brain, tuned to the odd and novel and new
soon
fails to notice.
And
so, like dust-bunnies under the bed
that
are out of sight and mind,
or
leftovers lost in fridge
behind
expired jars of who-knows-what
welded
shut by time,
things
settle-in
for
the long haul.
The
bric-a-brac
and
tchotchkes
and
vintage magazines.
The
yellowing ledgers
in
the top desk drawer
she
could only have kept
for
posterity;
the
cheque-books balanced, and statements justified,
the
manuals and warranties
alphabetically
filed,
the
carbon-copy receipts.
Testament
to a measured life
of
zero-sums.
The
closet piled high
with
old lady clothes
she
wore just once,
prudently
saved
for
the next big event
she
was certain would come.
The
upstairs rooms, still papered with posters
of
a rock-and-roll heroes
and
teen-aged angst,
with
their little bunk beds
and
pink princess sheets,
preserved
like
museums to childhood.
So
when she finally moved into the senior's home,
the
artifacts of a lifetime
were
left at the curb
sent
to Goodwill
peddled
on-line.
And
off to the dump with the rest,
without
sentiment
or
reverence
or
pause.
You'd
think that time would be fixed,
the
seconds counting-off,
the
hands of the clock
steadily
circling;
a
standard unit
like
teaspoons, or pounds.
Yet
looking ahead 10 years
it
seems immeasurably long,
while
looking back
it
feels like yesterday,
as
if the decades all happened at once,
and
you were still, somehow
unaccountably young.
Just
as the things we hold dear
mean
less and less
the
older we get,
and
what for all those years
you
so dutifully kept
becomes
disposable.
Old
age
is
getting used to loss, she said
hobbling
about on aching joints
with
her bad heart, and rheumy eyes,
but
all the stuff
is
just dead weight, and nothing more.
So
she took some pictures, some letters, a favourite chair
while
we spent a week
clearing
out the place.
An
empty house
that
looks immense
with
all its clutter gone,
and
might as well have belonged
to
someone else.
Time
moves on
and
time is mutable.
We
cannot hold back the tide,
or
command – arms outstretched – its receding waters to stop.
And
in the end
the
things we surround ourselves with
cannot
protect us from loss
or
make life more meaningful.
The
seconds
adding
relentlessly up,
our
allotted time
quickening
down.
In
its conception, this poem actually began with the observation about
the shifting perspective on time. I was thinking of someone in their
20s looking ahead to their 60s: how inconceivable that age must
seem; the seemingly infinite amount of time you have. In contrast
with looking back: how it all seems like yesterday, and how you are
much the same person, despite the passage of time. Which is both good
and bad: that you haven't grown as much as perhaps you should have,
but also that the essential qualities that make you who you are
persist.
Anyway,
it is in this looking back that our values also change. When we're
past the life stage of accumulating possessions; when we've learned
that the hedonic jolt of something new is transient and changes
nothing, and that most of these material things – that we once
sought after and valued – have little meaning as we get closer to
the end of life. Think how liberating it would be if we could
leapfrog to that insight years earlier, if we could so easily free
ourselves of attachment and desire!
Both
of these lines of thought combined with a friend's recent experience:
moving her mother from her house of 34 years into a senior's home,
and the vast amount of work involved in clearing out all of the
accumulated possessions. We work all our lives to obtain this stuff.
We maintain it, insure it, worry about it, and get upset if something
is damaged or lost. And yet, in the fullness of time, it's all
reduced to junk: it's simply a burden; we don't care for it anymore;
and certainly no one else does.
Still,
the familiar landscape of home is comforting. A place for everything,
and everything in its place. Just so.
I
quite like the title's double entendre. It works well in a poem that
talks about both our relationship to our possessions and our
subjective perception of time: second hand goods; the second hand,
steadily circling.
This
line – while the brain,
tuned to the odd and novel and new
– was originally “while the brain, tuned to the unexpected”. I
felt the final version scanned better. Although "novel"
and "new" are, of course, perfect synonyms, and might
strike a discerning reader as mere padding and unnecessary wordiness.
This is the opposite of what you want in a poem. Because while a poem
should contain ambiguity and allusion, it should also have razor-like
sharpness in its economy and precision. I think one of the great
pleasure I get in reading a poem is when I encounter that one
perfectly distilled word that does so much work, that fits in terms
of rhyme and rhythm, and yet does so with exquisite brevity and
wit. Sometimes, though, a writer gets to indulge: use some
filler for the sake of the sound. It can also be argued that
repetition has its place. It provides emphasis and strength. And
anyway, two words never mean exactly the same, so a synonym also
comes with its own subtle valence, which undoubtedly adds to the
richness of the language.
