Poetry and being heard

Went back to writing poetry this morning.

Thought about how the man in question would have sought this kind of thing out a year ago. Now I wonder if he'll bother to look at it at all, despite its presence on my Facebook page. Really, I'll have to start keeping it to myself anyway if I want to publish again, in magazines, I mean. And I do. Giving it away gets me nowhere and I've been nowhere long enough.

It occurs to me that the purpose of writing a poem is to express a complete thought. Usually it is a complete and fairly unusual thought, something you might want to think about but would not want to discuss. Usually something that couldn't be discussed.

Peripheral issues that thought stirs up could be discussed, but not the thought itself. That's what poetry is for, it is a single, clear observation that sets off resonances that create other observations in the reader. It is not a dialogue. It is more like a painting.

Been doing the ground work for a labyrinth project, slowly, slowly. Seems I do have all the time in the world to do these things, certainly more than I want, and it has occurred to me that walking the labyrinth is like making a poem (yes, poets call it that) or a painting but doing so with your body on the earth and doing it in a way where you leave no real trace and therefore put no ego into it.

You draw a symbol on the earth with your intention and that is how the earth is moved, changed, healed - it is how time is altered. It's a single statement, an idea too complex to discuss around which all other ideas about your life are formed, how you move on the earth, what you bless by your motion and your footsteps, how you pray, your intentions made manifest.

I have fallen in love with a man who is cloudy, muddied by the material aspects of life and all the complications, he cannot see clearly and yet he would be an artist. What he doesn't seem to realize is that the reason he works with images he gathers when he is not at home is because he cannot see while he is in his own body, on his own land, in his own place. He is up to his neck in the things that build illusions of permanence yet pass even as we are maintaining them - the car maintenance, the deadlines, the family crisis - waiting for these things to pass as they sweep his life into their current and out to the river of eternity.

Not that these things aren't important, even vitally so but to see them as the only things that matter - that way lies oblivion far too early.

Of course it is all too easy for us to see the things that blind and wound others. I am equally muddied, quite sure of that but because it is all within me, I can't see it. So I carry on, trying to act and speak from my higher nature, whatever that is and no doubt failing every day.

Someone I know quoted Mark Twain today, the one about setting sail for adventure because in 20 years you will only regret the things you did not do. Well, I have lived that way. I can say that with some certainty and although there is truth in that value there is equal truth in the fact that staying in one place, having family and friends who root you, understanding that place and loving it well, loving it fully - that is a different kind of adventure and one with value of its own. In fact, I would say one value is equal to the other. Many times it seems to me the value of being truly rooted in the love of one place for a lifetime is the greater adventure. It grants you the opportunity to see deeply into human nature, into your own nature and into the land you inhabit. None of us will ever live long enough to understand these things fully and they are worth knowing.

There is also the fact that Mark Twain never mentions the aftermath of adventures - coming home to the shut up household, the loneliness of traveling and returning alone, the longing for the people and places who are never permanent.

And what happens when you finally do find a place that stirs in you that deep love of home? The place where you could spend a lifetime and still have every day be an adventure? What happens then?

Like all travelers you cannot stay. Life itself is a temporary visa and there is heartbreak in knowing that truth. There must be much comfort in being somewhere you can say you have loved all your life and in making it your own. It makes me feel quite shallow, damaged and ashamed never to have found that before Austin and bereft to have found it now and not to be able to engage in that deeper adventure.

I suppose a part of me is in mourning and honestly - I'm so tired of hiding it.

Here is the poem I wrote this morning. Since it's already out there, there's no point saving it for paper publication.


in 2100 the dead will have a union.
or a consortium, the point is, they will speak
with one voice and keep a little money aside
enough to hire lobbyists
and make their voices heard.

they will have the vote
freedom of speech
and fair representation in 48 states

they will ask that all the bathtubs in home supply and department store displays
be hooked up to the plumbing
enough to make the taps work and the water run
but not to drain.
the flow will go only one way.

they will ask that you turn down the light
on your computer, in your living room
in the streets and alleys at night

and go to bed when you say you do, for a change.

they will ask that these things be made a part of the law
and we will see no reason not to

what reason is there?
not to grant last wishes.

They will speak as one group and define their members
only enough for us to know they were here once and they remember everything.

They will not say what it’s like to be where they are but
they will answer any question we can ask, while they hear us
if we phrase it exactly right.

They will remind us, they know where we have been
and have been where we are going
their rights will become bylaws and ritual will grow again
like weeds and grasses on roads where cars no longer go

we will wear black for a year
we will speak in hushed tones when we speak of them

we will think their earmarks and filibusters are tyrannical
but we will not say

only look at each other and see their place in our pasts and our futures
drink sometimes, dance and deny it.

And I know all this because I live in a place where it snows every day
and the snow is on the television
and in your hair

the wind blows every day

the wind is in your ears and on your telephone and it says things that are random
if you are still sane and quite specific otherwise

and those rights and regulations
in a place like this

are as close as your hand to your face
or your pillow to your cheek

on those long, silent nights when the phone doesn’t ring
and you cannot find a candle.