Let the Wind Have Its Way - May 17 2021

 

Let the Wind Have Its Way

May 17 2021

I've never suffered from ambition.

Even out fishing

I'd rather just sit

eyes drifting shut,

my small wooden skiff

at the mercy of wind.

Where a tug on the line

is just a minor annoyance,

because catching fish

was hardly the point,

so back they get thrown

with a vague twinge of guilt.

Stagnant water

sloshes in the bilge.

Bait bakes

in unforgiving sun,

biting bugs buzz.

Ice melts

and the beer remains undrunk.

Is this why she left me?

For some go-getting hail-well-met

boosterish type?

Type A, they call it.

Which leaves the rest of the letters

for lesser men like me.

No keeping up with others.

No keeping score with money.

And no faith in posterity,

when even celebrated men

are no different than the rest

and end up in oblivion as well;

forgotten

no matter how eminent and beloved.

And will ultimately end

when the sun explodes

in a brilliant supernova,

consuming our descendants

and what legacy remains,

every creature, plant, and saprophyte

on a vanished planet earth.

So I say teach a man to fish

and let the wind have its way.

Eventually bumping into shore

in some unfamiliar place,

snoozing in the sun

in the warm swampy shallows

at the bottom of a bay.

While the lake is left to itself,

fish

eating or being eaten

and competing for mates,

just as their counterparts on land

are racing for first place.

The line “I've never suffered from ambition” wrote itself, and I thought it gave me a good opening to write about my essential nihilism. But I soon found the piece taking a serious philosophical turn, and I quickly realized how poorly that suited poetry. That's the business of prose. Instead, the rhyme led me to “fishing”, and – even though I don't – it seemed like as good a way as any to express these ideas: that is, showing instead of saying.

Of course, I'm not entirely without ambition. It's more that I'm not ambitious in the conventional sense – keeping up; status; accumulating wealth. And it doesn't help that I'm cynical about posterity and struggle for meaning. Not that I think it's unusual to contend with meaning and purpose in life. But perhaps harder for me, since I'm not a man of faith, and so have no easy answers.

I couldn't resist “saprophyte”, even though the unfamiliarity of the word and its technical sound will probably interrupt the flow for most readers. Couldn't resist because this 3^rd great branch in the kingdoms of life is too often ignored. . . .Not to mention that the rhyme and cadence of the word fit the line perfectly!