Surfacing - Sept 11 2020

 

Surfacing

Sept 11 2020

I surface from a troubled sleep.

Remnants of dreams

sink into murk.

Like early morning sun

burning off the fog

what's near emerges first

then far slowly resolves,

the light sharpening

as a familiar world

rematerializes.

An agitated sleep

of tossing and awakenings,

hallucinatory dreams

that make no sense.

But it's a new day

and the fog is lifting,

the lake is cool and calm

and glints in rising sun.

Smooth rocks slope down

into still water,

the last wisps of mist

thin imperceptibly out.

It could be a still life

in primary colours.

How odd, my kaleidoscopic sleep

of action and transience,

while real life

appears motionless.

Unrestorative sleep,

and an awakening

that rests my weary soul.

I'm a nocturnal creature, both by habit and nature, so I rarely get to see an early morning fog burn off. But I was out canoeing early this evening, the lake was relatively calm, and this image seemed to superimpose itself on my mind's eye: a low morning sun, the rocks sloping down into still water, a dense fog slowly lifting. The words resonated as they came to me: water, fog, calm, rock, toss ...and then odd. So I thought there might be a poem here, and later started noodling around. “Still” was the key word: I wanted to evoke a sense of stillness and utter calm. (It strikes me how each word demands its descriptor: it's the lake that must be calm, the water still. For some reason, not the other way around!)

It had to be a short poem, because there wasn't much there to start. I think this brevity is a strength. Especially the restraint in terms of description: not a lot of adjectives, not a lot of detail. I've always found that pointing the reader in the right direction and then letting her do the rest is a great way to keep her compelled and engaged. Leave space, and let the reader's imagination complete the thing. Leave space, and it might say something different every time she revisits it – which is the test of a good poem, the urge to reread. Two good reasons why less is almost always more.