Tilted Arc

June 25 2018

As you journey further and further north

   —   plodding by foot

along a line of longitude

that stretches from pole to pole   —

the day steadily lengthens,

every few steps

seconds more.

Between the first day of summer, and winter's depths

it's as if you can actually sense

in the heat

soaking into your skin

and the light

holding back the dark

the vast geometry

of circling planets

in their intricately choreographed dance;

in the passage of time

the measure of space.

Feel yourself

an infinitesimal speck

on a constant patch of land

all your senses tell you is flat,

on a rapidly spinning sphere

too massive to make sense of,

travelling in its tilted arc

around a yellow star.

Or, you can simply sit,

leaning back

in the languorous warmth

as your heavy eyes drift shut.

The red glow behind your lids

the penetrating heat,

the insect buzz, a puff of breeze

the sultry flush of sweat.

Thinking that 6 months hence

you'd be buried in snow;

a Siberian mammoth, preserved on ice

until the next big melt.

The cycle of freeze and thaw,

of ice age

and interglacial.

Because what goes around comes around.

As planets revolve and rotate

stars spin through space

and galaxies majestically wheel.

A clockwork universe

in a perfectly balanced dance

of distant attraction

and invisible lines of force.

And you

alive, for this blink in time

on flotsam earth.

I like the way this poem moves in and out, and does so in both time and space: between days and season and epochs; from the personal and circumscribed to the unimaginably large. It starts small, and then – after the aperture dilates and narrows and dilates again – ends in much the same place.

I think this reflects a theme I return to often: the idea of humanity's insignificance in a cold indifferent universe. Which is not a message of nihilism so much as one of humility. And which is where I depart from both the religionists and the modernists: instead of putting self-important man at the centre, I make us out as marginal and transient.

Pray For Rain

June 16 2018

Even the weeds have withered

in this long dry spell,

their zigzag edges browned

fronds dulled by dust;

oppressive stillness

for days on end

in unremitting sun.

But now, it's steamy hot

and you can feel the building storm,

something electric

unsettling the air.

The laundry hangs heavy

still stubbornly wet.

My sodden shirt sticks

seams chafing with sweat.

And it's harder and harder to breath,

as if water and heat

had displaced essential oxygen.

In the distance, there's a deep bass rumbling

which I feel, more than hear,

anxiously expectant

in this deceptive calm.

Like the muted sounds of war

inching closer and closer

but still too far to see;

the thud of cannon, and strafing runs

the flat repeat of guns,

armoured dozers' diesel throb

the trudge of weary grunts.

The sky darkens, the ceiling lowers.

And we reflexively duck

at the first boom of thunder,

as a fitful breeze quickens

and sprinkles pit the dust.

Then a blistering volley of gusts

from all directions at once,

as lightning cracks the sky

and rain comes bucketting down.

The washing whips free

and the line rips from its wheel;

and we lean into the wind,

shrink-wrapped

in sopping clothes.

The water rising

on impervious  earth,

running-off, instead of soaking in

to the hard-baked soil.

The rain we were praying for.

Even the non-believers, like me

who scoff at an absent God

and resist superstition.

A God, so quick to temper,

so cruel and contingent

in His whimsical gifts,

so unmoved

by our offerings.

We, too, looked up to the heavens

along with the rest;

the devout few

who are sure of their faith,

and the many more

for whom it's a struggle.

As if hope and need

could conquer doubt.

As if an act of will

could end a drought.

Life Force

June 6 2018

So, even NASA clean rooms

are contaminated.

Because bacteria have learned to eat

the hissing liquids, and blistering suds

the frothing foams, and caustic scrub

we were certain killed.

How clever

uncanny

unstoppable.

The life force

pushing ever outward,

like a heated gas

irresistibly expanding,

a mushroom cloud

billowing up, and out.

An animating God,

who breathes into life

and decrees it sacred.

Bacteria in rocks, volcanoes

the abyssal deep.

The dry Atacama

blasted by sun,

among our cells, and in our blood.

Exported to space

on the sleek metallic skin

of moon-landing rovers

and rockets to Mars.

Metastatic life

colonizing this blue and green planet

with its imperative to grow

couple

survive,

filling the place

until even the most extreme niche

is occupied.

If you've ever tried to kill

you know what I mean.

The crunch

of the hard coat

of the small black ant

zig-zagging blindly past;

the identical clones

who swarm in its place.

The man, gasping for breath

who simply refuses to die

no matter how battered and beaten and bled;

the faraway look in his eyes,

as consciousness flickers

and the death grip

pulls you frantically in.

The bolt to the brain comes closest.

The efficiency

of the killing floor,

when the big animal's legs

collapse like a marionette's,

and the dead weight of the carcass

seems even heavier.

Rigor mortis meat

with its pungent adrenaline edge.

But life persists.

The living consuming the dead.

Malignant growth, for its own sake

exponentially outward.

Here's a link to the article, by the Atlantic's outstanding science correspondent Ed Yong, that inspired this poem:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/bacteria-can-eat-the-cleaning-products-nasa-uses-to-sterilize-its-spaceships/562016/

On reading this, I was impressed by how indomitable life is.

And also, by nature, how malignant it is: like a metastatic cancer, growing until it outgrows its substrate, and for no reason other than the imperative of growth.**

And, by analogy, our own species: spreading relentlessly over this rare and precious planet like some Malthusian nightmare, until we will have destroyed it, and ourselves, with our insatiable appetite and extravagant waste.

So I suppose this poem is both an environmentalist's screed and a misanthrope's indulgence. With a little nod to the inner vegetarian, who wags his accusing finger every time he finds me eating meat. But no, it is not autobiographical: I have never tried to kill, except for the odd ant and biting insect!

As you can see by the date of my last post, it seems as if I haven't written forever. Amend that; I haven't written poetry forever. But there is a certain writing bug than can't be expiated via letters, and I had been hoping some inspiration would strike. So it was nice when I felt a little jolt after reading this article. But then I sat down, wrote a lousy few lines, and decided I wasn't feeling it. It was as I started to get up that another first line came, and suddenly I was into it, and that old pleasurable experience returned:  I lost track of time; and the writing came almost automatically, as if I were taking dictation and not composing. After being away from it for awhile, it definitely felt similar to exercising when you've gotten a little out of shape: hard at first, but then the muscle memory and the residue of training soon get you back up to speed.

** I realize that reducing all living things to a malignant imperative to grow would seem to demean our humanity, since we are certainly among the living. After all, we humans are much more than a mindless mass of exponentially growing cells; we have consciousness. Conscious not in terms of a state of wakefulness, but in the sense of self-awareness and the boundary of ego and and a desire for meaning. Not to mention the awareness of our own mortality! But we are the exception. Because the vast majority of living things are essentially automatons, guided by the simple algorithm of survival and reproduction, and to whom consciousness is of only limited use – an evolutionary innovation that enabled the increasingly complex systems of big multicellular organisms to interact with the outer world. Of course, this could only be the point of view of someone who is very reductionist about the great mystery of consciousness: believing that the mind and brain are one; and that consciousness resides in that 3 lb mass of protoplasm, not some hovering or indestructible or divinely created soul.