Settling

Jan 7 2016

The land settles

                              …subsides

                                                  …shifts.

You talk about being grounded;

ground down, ground zero

stripped.

Like mountain tops, levelled inch-by-inch

by men who moil for riches,

heavy machinery, swarming

like hard yellow beetles.

By continental drift.

Action, at a distance.

Sink-holes, depletion

sudden shifts.

And the slow compaction of soil

where your footings stand.

But you look good

following the flow of the land.

How an old barn

falls in on itself,

decrepit, weathered, spent.

How an ancient cathedral sits,

heavy blocks of stone

that seem immovable.

And you, complacently

settling for what you have;

your magical thoughts

and gods who won't respond,

the contingencies

you counted on.

The ground under your feet

you imagined permanent,

but in the end

let you down.

The best-laid plans

and accidents of birth.

The temblors and quakes

subterranean waves

that invisibly transit earth.

A lifetime of work

interred in the ruins.

Writing this poem was like taking dictation. Some of my best feel that way. Which may apply to the heat of creation, but which also threatens the good old puritan work ethic we were raised on: that is, if it came easily, it can’t be good or worthwhile.

It was also the rare poem that's written directly on the keyboard, instead of with pen to paper (and a virtual iPad keyboard, at that -- with its unpleasant haptic of tapping directly on glass). I've never been very comfortable writing without the tactile feel of ink. But, apparently, it sometimes works. (Just to be clear, my usual process is to write on paper, edit on the keyboard.)

Once again, there is the liberal use of ellipses. I’m not so sure about this. It strikes me as a cheap device. But I like the way it gives the words space. Commas seem too busy. And this visual space is a cue to temporal space; that is, to letting the words linger.

I guess I can now add geology poems to my oeuvre of physics ones. Although the highlight of this poem has to be shoehorning-in that delightful word "moil": not Robert Service's "moiling for gold" (the only other place I've seen it used), but rather the far less glamorous strip-mining of coal.

I'll make one comment on the content of the poem, and leave the rest to the reader. One thing the poem does -- and what becomes its title -- is take the metaphorical "settling" and make it literal. It also plays around with the word's two connotations. First, there's “settled”, with its sense of being grounded, of being comfortable in your own skin: like a building that sits organically on the land, as if it belongs; that occupies its site as if it has always been there; that naturally subsides as the land subsides. And then there's “settling”, with all its baggage of complacency: that is, being content to follow the path of least resistance;  being satisfied with whatever you get.