April 12, 2012

It's a quiet morning, slow to start, even the birds asleep, and the wind.  The color outside is just the darkest blue, the black trees barely visible.  There must be something awake, but I fear it is not me.  My mind this morning just wants to run in circles, looking for something, anything to settle on.  It's one of those mornings where every poem I read seems to have a smooth oiled surface that I can find no way through, I just slip and slide.  Since it is still effectively dark, there is not even the least inspiration from outside either.

So, at last, I find a poem I can relate to even on this slow dark morning.  Though I have never poisoned my family, and 95% of what is in my refrigerator is edible, (there's always that stray margarine tub full of something we meant to eat), Mikayla is always asking if this or that thing is still good.  I don't think she believes in expiration dates, she must have the theory that things just suddenly spoil and become something dangerous.  She asks so often that it's become a family funny, and we all smile and tell her it's good to eat or drink, that it will not contaminate her or make her ill.  Jane Hirshfield is one of my favorite poets, and yes, I have a lot of them.  But here she gives a whole new meaning to . . . perishable, or perhaps it just goes back further to the original meaning!

Perishable, It Said

Perishable, it said on the plastic container,
and below, in different ink,
the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed.

I found myself looking:
now at the back of each hand,
now inside the knees,
now turning over each foot to look at the sole.

Then at the leaves of the young tomato plants,
then at the arguing jays.

Under the wooden table and lifted stones, looking.
Coffee cups, olives, cheeses,
hunger, sorrow, fears—
these too would certainly vanish, without knowing when.

How suddenly then
the strange happiness took me,
like a man with strong hands and strong mouth,
inside that hour with its perishing perfumes and clashings.  

Jane Hirshfield

It's one of the things that creates beauty, being perishable, being fleeting, having an expiration date.  Birdsong is lovely because it's occasional, the beauty of sunrise because it's fleeting, swiftly turning into day, as twilight into night.  There will be another tomorrow, but never the same as the one today, only there for a brief moment, to be appreciated for that.  I understand her strange happiness, the joy of coffee, of green growing things, of being hungry and filling that hunger, of being melancholy and finding solace, of being afraid and finding peace.  That old wise expression . . . the wisest one in the world I sometimes think . . . This too shall pass.  So that there is comfort in knowing things have their own time, their own season, and will come and go as they always have, as we will, and, you know, it's probably a good thing we are not labeled with an expiration date.  It's rather nice not knowing, we will just have to enjoy the world as we have it, one moment at a time.