Counting Down - Dec 27 2020

 

Counting Down

Dec 27 2020

In the dead of winter

we count down to spring.

We do what the living do,

muddling through

day after day.

We slog through slush

in salt encrusted boots.

Shovel knee-high snow

grunting and grumbling with every chuck

of the heavy white stuff.

And feel the cold north wind

cut the pinched dry skin

of uncovered faces.

And when spring finally comes

with its mud and bugs and Biblical rains

find we're impatiently waiting for summer;

hunkering down to chores,

cleaning up the usual mess

then endlessly finding more.

Except

that when summer's at its height

it's too damned hot,

and those long torpid days

start to weigh after a while.

When the lawn always needs cutting

and mosquitoes keep buzzing

and there's pressure to do something cool

before the season is over

and who looks good in shorts?

If only fall were here,

with its temperate days and comfortable nights

and the melancholy turning of leaves.

Which never got raked

before the first wet snow

so they'll still be there next spring,

sodden and heavy and smelling of mould

in the chilly grey thaw.

But yet, we keep wanting more of it.

Of change, of chores

of life.

Of doing what the living do

day after day,

because it is what it is

and there is always hope.

Grunting and grumbling and feeling ourselves

in body and spirit and mind,

that good gratified tired

of more or less having done

and being fully alive.

I can only take – at best – partial ownership of this poem. Or you could call it homage instead of derivative, and excuse my lack of originality. Because it was directly inspired by a poem by Marie Howe. It first appeared in The Atlantic in 1994, and was just republished today on the website.

It's very much in the spirit I like: the small and diurnal and closely observed. It immediately pulled me in, right from the opening line. First, for its simple conversational tone. And second, because it's a thought that has crossed my mind a lot lately; perhaps as a form of consolation and constructive reframing: while suffering through crappy things, and feeling it's just one thing after another, trying to view it as being engaged and immersed in the stuff of life. Completion isn't the point. Happiness and fulfillment aren't perpetually moving targets, to be realized someday when everything is finally finished. This is very much like calling up the cliché “plenty of time to sleep when you're dead”. “Doing what the living do” is perfect! What else is there? What am I waiting for?

I've heard the expression “It is what it is” repeatedly criticized. Maybe because it sounds not only banal, but like giving up – a kind of shrugging passivity, a defeated nihilism. But I see it as gimlet-eyed realism. I admire the spirit of stoicism it represents: a combination of serene acceptance, personal humility, and steady dogged determination. “It is what it is” is not simply a throwaway “whatever”, but a deeply philosophical statement.

What follows is the introduction that preceded the poem, and then the piece itself:

Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do” begins with an address to her brother: The kitchen sink has been clogged for days, she writes. The Drano won’t work ... it’s winter again … the heat’s on too high.

The poem might seem at first like a list of complaints, but it’s a list of gratitudes. Most readers won’t know that Howe’s younger brother John died of AIDS-related complications in 1989. John is the one to whom she reports these seemingly meaningless details, of the sky and the groceries and the spilled coffee. These are the details that Howe is left with, and that her brother can’t experience anymore. This is why she is “gripped by a cherishing” when she catches a glimpse of her reflection, hair blowing in the wind.

It’s also a proclamation of tenderness for humanity. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

Faith Hill

What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Marie Howe

Heartless - Dec 20 2020

 

Heartless

Dec 20 2020

Even without muscles, blood

a beating heart

some trees are able to warm themselves,

in the cool morning mist

helping to vaporize

the volatile scents

that attract their pollinators.

The way a woman applies cologne

to the thin skin of her wrist

and lifts it to her nose.

Who knew trees could be so clever,

that a green succulent tree

rooted firmly in place

could be so self-determining,

aware of temperature

independent of weather.

Or failed to credit

the exigency of sex

as the mother of invention.

So now, I wonder

if lacking axons, neurons, brains

they also think in some way

we will never understand.

How we can live out our years

beside something so familiar

yet alien,

parallel lives

that never intersect

or comprehend the other.

What else have we missed

in our human centeredness?

Homeothermic trees

and rats who laugh when they're tickled,

birds making tools

and packs of wolves who mourn.

Warm trees

and heartless men

who are cold and dead inside.

When things are often less than they seem

and sometimes so much more.

The problem with the question posed in the poem is that the nature of “thinking” is left undefined. We imagine sentience when we see that word: that is, self-awareness that includes a sense of personal boundary, individuality, and a kind of psychological insight; agency (or at least the illusion of agency); and biographical memory as well as an ability to imagine the future. The trouble is, a living thing can think without sentience: perform complex acts that adjust to circumstance and demonstrate memory and learning without the need of a sense of self; that is, without sentient consciousness. Trees demonstrate memory, they process complex information, they communicate, and they alter their behaviour according to changing conditions. All this is thinking. But it happens without a central nervous system. And who knows if there is sentience/consciousness or not. Since we could never have imagined “thinking” without a nervous system or brain, perhaps we also aren't capable of understanding a different valence of consciousness.

I was surprised to learn this about trees. But then, nature is always surprising us. We under-estimate nature and often have too high an opinion of ourselves and of our exceptionalism.

Apparently, one doesn't need a heart to be warm. Conversely, there are those with hearts who remain cold. (And writing this 30 days from the official end of the Trump administration – thank God! – this is particularly salient!)

What follows has nothing to do with this particular piece, but I wrote it to a friend after sharing the first draft. It helps explain why I write these commentaries (or, as I like to all them, “blurbs”), which some others may be wondering as well:

“One of the people in your (our?) contact thread questioned why a poet feels the need to write something to explain the poem. He should know that this is not what I do. The poem stands on its own, and readers are free to see in it what they want. There is no correct way to read it. Rather, my prose and poetry represent completely different ways of thinking and different approaches to the same topic. Prose is my natural form. I think and write in a very logical, sequential, linear way. While poetry's strength is allusion, misdirection, and ambiguity. Prose says as much as possible; poetry leaves space. So I find the poetry frustrating, in a way. I write it because it's a challenge for someone like me. And since I can't say what I want to say clearly and directly and comprehensively, the prose blurb lets me get it out of my system. I also use it to remind myself of how the poem came about, and because I sometimes think these curious and circuitous origin stories might be of interest to the reader.”

Human Remains - Dec 18 2020

 

Human Remains

Dec 18 2020

I remember scattering the ashes.

Except they didn't scatter.

There were the tiny fragments of bone

that unceremoniously fell

from my out-stretched hand.

The dark gritty sand

which was coarser than expected,

and heavier than the wind

so it landed in clumps.

And then the fine grey stuff

that was more airy than I'd envisioned,

blowing back at me

in the fitful breeze

and coating my arm

in its sticky white substance.

So a parting ritual

that should have been reverent and reflective

was hardly that.

I can thinking of nothing more intimate

than touching with your bare hand

the last remnants of someone you loved,

then closing your grip

and holding tight.

But human remains

are nothing more than chemistry;

it's memory

where lived lives are kept.

And it's not the scattering

that actually matters,

but the knowing

that when the end comes

they will honour your wish.

That you will be returned to the forest

the sea

the mountain top

and spend eternity there,

a part of nature, the cycle of life,

from birth to death

and back again.

They calculate

that the stuff of a human body

would cost no more than 200 dollars

in its elemental form.

Which is all these ashes are,

a roaring fire

once the fuel is exhausted

and the flame goes out.

So stir the ashes, when they're still warm.

Then let them smoulder

in the blackened pit

until even the ground is cold;

a dark scar

in the forest floor

in a small sunlit clearing,

where a sapling will soon appear

and a tree eventually grow.

I was listening to a Radiolab episode ( https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/ashes-lawn ) about an AIDs demonstration in the early 90s in which protesters breached a perimeter of mounted police surrounding the White House and threw the ashes of their loved ones over the fence. It reminded me of that hilarious scene in The Big Lebowski where John Goodman's character – the very self-serious Walter Sobchak – tries scattering Donny's ashes in a strong wind. So while I apologize for writing another poem on the theme of death, it came about not out of morbid preoccupation but rather from an unintended encounter in daily life.

I had always imagined human remains post-cremation were like wood ash after a fire: relatively uniform, flaky, light. But apparently they aren't. I've never scattered ashes, so I googled to check my accuracy.

Humans have always had valued rituals around death. But I'm not particular what happens to the inanimate stuff of my dead body. After all, as the poem says, it's merely chemistry. Although, since we still need to be disposed of in some way or other, I would much prefer an environmental burial: in my case, an unembalmed body in a simple shroud placed in a shallow grave at the foot of a tree. If cremation is necessary, then the same for my ashes.

You can find many estimates for the elemental value of a human body. If, instead, you use the black market price of its organs, then this number would be substantially higher. And then, of course, it will change with markets and inflation. But the first estimate I came across on Google was $160.00 (although inflation may have made it higher since it was originally set), and since “no more than 200 dollars” worked nicely in the poem, I kept it. Whatever the number, the point is clear: as a chemistry set, the body isn't worth much! But then, even though an important part of our sense of self comes from being embodied, we are not our bodies; we are minds and souls.

Solid Ground - Dec 17 2020

 

Solid Ground

Dec 17 2020

The longest night of the year,

when our short growing season

seems even more improbable.

A pale sun

rises barely halfway up the trees,

which stand forbearingly

in the brittle cold,

frozen sentinels

with dregs of snow

still clinging to their branches,

the thinly needled conifers

and those bared of leaves.

Beneath a few feet

of freshly fallen snow

the earth is at rest.

But the dormant grass

has burrowed its roots into the soil

which is not nearly so cold,

warmed by decomposition

and the nuclear heat

of disintegrating atoms in the planet's core,

the liquid magma

bubbling deep beneath the land

we call solid ground.

Appearances deceive;

the lifeless trees

and dead grass

and sterile field of snow.

Even the ground beneath our feet

is not as constant as we thought;

a continent floating on liquid rock,

and the heat of a small sun

10 kilometres down.

A mere 6 minutes by car

an hour or two to walk.

The First Full Length - Dec 14 2020

The First Full Length

Dec 14 2020

I do the first full length submerged.

Before my goggles have fogged over,

so the regular parallel rows

of small blue tiles

are in perfect focus

as they steadily unscroll

beneath my clear-eyed gaze,

looking down

from effortless height

as if in flight

through thin transparent air.

Measuring out my breath

as a frugal string of bubbles

rises overhead.

That first quick plunge

into the cool water

feels cathartic,

all the angular sounds

reflecting from the hard glazed deck

and bare concrete walls

are mercifully muffled,

my protesting body

unburdened of its weight.

I push off

with a sleek sensation of speed,

reach ahead with my arms

feel my back extend.

The movement of water

against smooth naked skin,

the well-protected space

of my own fenced-off lane.

All it takes

is a single length

and I instantly shed the world,

taking improbable flight

in this safe pelagic domain.

Unfolding - Dec 6 2020

 

Unfolding

Dec 6 2020

We evolved from apes,

who themselves descended

from some single celled creature

over billions of years.

Evolution,

derived from the words for “unfolding”

as it ever so slowly unspools.

I think of a book being opened,

but there is no direction, or progress

to this perilous unfolding

and the printed page is blank.

There is is simply the best fit

and what nature has conferred,

given the time in which it occurs

and whatever circumstance prevails.

Or a paper fan unfurled,

its folds expanding

into the vast unknown world

of diversity and wonder

we are privileged to discover

for ourselves.

Or a mystery, revealed bit-by-bit,

with all its misdirections

and unexpected twists,

what surprise ending

fate has in store.

Will we persist?

Or return to the trees

download into robots

become extinct?

I said descend, not progress.

Because the tree of life

does not ascend

to greater and greater perfection.

Instead, it branches beneath us

the apple falls,

the growing point shifts

the slender trunk topples.

We do not rule by divine right

aren't the apple of God's eye,

and a single bite

gets us expelled.

Because there is no such thing

as manifest destiny.

There is only living your life

as best you can,

given the time in which it occurs

and whatever circumstance prevails.

Two things about evolution are widely misunderstood.

First, that evolution represents progress: as if there were some intelligence at work, some plan; and as if our particular endowments as Homo sapiens – language, abstract thought, social intelligence – were somehow privileged and inevitable. No, evolution is random – depending on contingency, chance, opportunity -- and really has no point except for the life principle: that is, once set in motion, the dogged drive of biological survival for its own sake. And simpler more “primitive creatures” – those that have endured unchanged for the longest time – could just as reasonably be called evolution's most successful result: so perfectly fitted to their environment (and lucky enough that that environment remained stable over time) to have endured. Because isn't a shark, for example, among the most successful of creatures, despite its basic form predating the dinosaurs: so brilliantly honed by random mutation and natural selection into the ultimate aquatic killing machine?

(I will say , though, that evolution has an appearance of order, even though there is no intelligence behind it. Because various distinct paths of evolution seem to find the same solutions. This is known as convergence, and an example would be birds acquiring wings while some mammals independently evolved the same capacity for flight using the same body part modified in similar ways: different species arriving at the same solution via completely separate paths. In this sense, the evolution of an intelligence like ours coupled with 2-handed dexterity might be inevitable, given sufficient time. Because there is always a niche that this particular talent can exploit, and if it hadn't been a small arboreal mammal that found such a path (as well as no large asteroid!), then it would have been some clever dinosaur instead. This convergence can also be seen in an isolated continent like Australia, where the native animals have evolved to fill the identical roles and interdependencies that very different and unrelated creatures fill elsewhere in the world.)

The second common misunderstanding is that “fitness” implies “red in tooth and claw”. Because Darwin recognized that cooperation – social adhesion, symbiosis and mutualism, the strength of numbers – was as critical to survival as competition and battle.

Or perhaps three, since “the theory of ...” makes the idea of evolution seem provisional, instead of established fact. And also betrays a faulty view of science, which is never truly final and always subject to questioning, revision, and refinement. So that everything in science – no matter how reproducible and unchanging – in some sense always remains a “theory”, open to any better explanation and synthesis that comes along. Religion may rely on dogma and faith, but the progress of science depends on constant questioning and skepticism. To say “theory” is simply to acknowledge having an open mind, and shouldn't detract from the authority of such a brilliant synthesis of natural history and observed fact.

I responded strongly when I encountered this fine point of etymological pedantry. I immediately saw all these unfoldings: of a book, with all the excitement of revelation as you turn the page; and also of a blank page, with nothing yet written ...of a fan, so much greater in size than one would have imagined ...and of a mystery, that could turn in any direction, rather than fixed on some predetermined course.

All Talk - Dec 3 2020

 

All Talk

Dec 3 2020

The whole story

was told in dialogue.

All talk,

as if nothing ever happens

to the taciturn

or those of few words.

Amazing how entire worlds

can be evoked in conversation;

as if what we say is so,

and if it's not spoken or shared

might as well not exist.

Although I miss the voice of God

narrating the action;

as if someone somewhere

is keeping track

of my insignificant life,

every inner thought

and chance at posterity.

And, of course, how you talk is everything,

thoughtfully measuring your words

attending to your tone.

Not coming off

as a rude and vulgar quipster

or slow, shallow, dim,

but rather quick, clever, glib

with drollery and wit.

And never in verse,

like every futile poet

trying to be heard.

So you must parse her body language

whisper in her ear,

carefully read her lips

and usher her graciously in.

It's either speak, or disappear.

Your incessant inner monologue

will never be heard,

because the silent are invisible

while the garrulous rule the world.

I turned to the latest short story in this week's New Yorker, and saw most of it was written in dialogue. I'm not a story teller. I don't do narrative. And most of all, I'm lousy at dialogue. So as someone who also writes, this really struck me: what utterly diametric skill sets the author and I have. (Not to mention that Paul Theroux is being published in the New Yorker, while I most definitely am not!)

It seems to me that without the omniscient narrator, there is can be no illusion of an objective reality. Hearing only talk, there are only each character's version of truth, world view, narrow aperture. Which is really how we should encounter people: acknowledging that there very well be multiple “truths”, and that only by inhabiting someone's idiosyncratic point of view can we gain empathy and understanding.

I wrote It's what you say, not what you do; which is said somewhat ironically, and is, of course, the opposite of wise counsel. Nevertheless, for the glib and unscrupulous, it often applies. I never ceased to be amazed how a grifter and huckster and snake oil salesman like Donald Trump can keep fooling so many people, constructing a false reality with his words while somehow keeping his loyal followers blind to his actions.

Abstract thought is impossible without language. We would simply be sensory creatures, reacting to physical stimulus and operating by instinct. So really, we are constructed of dialogue: if it isn't shared, it isn't real. And if it isn't contained in our inner monologue, it can't be processed or understood. The fact that a story can be told purely through dialogue tells us how language is the clay out of which we create the world.

Myths About the Moon - Dec 2 2020

 

Myths About the Moon

Dec 2 2020

It felt so much colder

under the clear night sky.

And the myths about the moon,

the lunacy

and human tides

and countless ancient goddesses,

began to seem real

when it was full,

its silvered light

enveloping the world.

One foot followed the other,

the regularity

of muscle memory

propelling me unconsciously on.

Dry snow crunched underfoot.

When it's even colder

the snow will make a high-pitched creak,

like a broken-down gate

leaning on a rusty hinge

swinging in the wind.

The sound was almost hypnotic,

carrying on the dense still air

clearly and precisely,

a fine-grained sound

that was unexpectedly loud

in the absolute silence.

In the purifying cold

and distilled light

that night the moon was full

it seemed almost mythological;

Luna

riding her chariot

to her secret lover's lair,

the aliens

who live on the far side

we never knew were there.

Will we still feel its power

when the moon's obscured by cloud?

The uncanny suspension of time,

its tidal force in human blood

and shape-shifting light?

And at sunrise

when it's a pale disc

in a sky of wash-water grey

will its spell also break?

I feel it already starting to wane

as this warm mass of air

moves in from the south

under a low blanket of cloud.

My heavy steps muffled

and the silver light softened

by wet sloppy snow.

The myths coming down to earth

and Luna all alone.

As the poem so literally says, I took a walk under a full moon and clear sky last night. But later today, it turned cloudy and dull; and although the air temperature isn't much different, the blanket of cloud has made it feel significantly warmer. The radiant heat loss under a clear sky really intensifies the cold. Which was the only thing I had in mind as the poem began. And an obvious meteorological phenomenon – no matter how dramatic – is hardly a promising subject for poetry. So I surrendered to my stream of consciousness, and this poem is the result. A risky poem, in its way. Especially for me, because I write too many about seasons and weather. Because moonlight is such a tired cliche. Because myths about tides and lunacy are too easy. And because references to Greek mythology is something dead poets did, back when readers could be presumed to have a classical education, and no one thought such mentions were both pretentious and inscrutable.

Endearment - Nov 27 2020

 

Endearment

Nov 27 2020

We weren't the kind of family

where parents were called

by their first names.

But my mother, who is Freda, has nevertheless

always been “Dear,”

which must seem normal only to us.

My dad would call her this

home for dinner

after a long day at work,

and the first born son

who was a precocious child

would mimic his endearment

and soon it stuck.

Nor were we the kind of family

who ever talked about love,

or found even the word

comfortable.

There were no kisses and hugs

no casual touch

no easy “I love you's”

passing between us.

No exploring of depths

instead of boundaries.

Yet this word persists

in all its inexplicable intimacy,

so familiar

we no longer hear it.

In-laws and friends

all call her Freda,

and mouthing the sound

as I type this out

makes her seem like a stranger to me

whom I've never really known.

Which may be closer to the truth

than the “Dear”

I speak to on the phone.

Perhaps now, even more unknowable

as dementia takes over

and she recedes even further away.

It will be Freda on her headstone, not “Dear”

when the day finally comes.

As if a distant relation

had been buried at my father's side,

someone whose company I might have enjoyed

if we all had been born

a generation later.

At a time

when hugs come more easily

and words less self-consciously,

and a heartfelt “Dear”

can be given unstintingly

and mean exactly what it says.

I'm inordinately proud of my brothers for raising their families very differently. They are both very involved with their children's lives, unselfconscious about being touchy-feely with them, and have no trouble with emotional expressiveness and “I love you's”. This is a generational thing. But I think also a conscious decision to reinvent fatherhood, and then pass it on. (I'm unmarried and have no kids, but am unstinting with my dogs. Not sure if that counts, though!)

We can't even talk on the phone anymore. We can, but it's frustrating and useless: her memory is poor, hearing often worse. Many adult children get to know their parents as people. I doubt I ever will. Even more disturbing is that it also works in the other direction. It's difficult to accept that you are not well understood by someone who should be among your most intimate and life-long relationships.