August 23, 2012

Earlier the sky was gray and close, now more blue and some distant clouds.  In the night, quiet steady rain for awhile, water dripping off the roof, and the grumbling of a mockingbird awakened by getting wet.  I could hear it in the holly bush, rummaging around and making disgruntled snatches of song: rusty squeak of the lady cardinal, soft caws of crow or blue jay.  Eventually it found a drier place and quieted down.  The sunlight is clear and gold this morning, the warmed wood glowing with it.

This morning the poem captures a moment as if a strobe light thrust it into memory, that one instant of total clarity.  (And don't you just love the title of this one <chuckle>?)

Matters About Which Unfortunately I Have No Brilliant Opinion to Offer Readers    

With the arrival of the night

some of his words, like the intermittent

flare [Here, I detected a point

of inflection provoked by the peculiar

nature of desire.

Which came to me

even faster than imagination

since it needs not move at all,

waiting hidden always

everywhere] of a cigarette,

called my attention to a luminous

moment before it faded away.

Sandra Santana

translated by Forrest Gander 

When the kids go out onto the back porch to smoke, they often come in and take me outside to see something: a weird view of the moon, a baby owl playing in the crepe myrtle, a troop of geckos on the kitchen window screen.  These are often moments that get caught up in memory because someone shared them.  And, though I know the poet was probably talking about a different state of desire, the need, the willingness to share something out of the ordinary is also a strong desire, why else would people write of something so simple as a moment of sharing in the flare of lighting a cigarette.  Morning or night, there has been a lot of sharing of luminous moments over the years.  Those moments in the night, ones I would surely have missed otherwise, are some of the keenest memories, lit by that desire to share, to point out something that might be missed.   That's one of the reasons I read poems every morning, to come to those moments I would not have otherwise, to have other memories, other things illuminated in my life.  How many times have I experienced something out of the realm of possibility for me, only to come to the conclusion the fundamental memory, that connection, is not so very different from things I have experienced.  Circumstances might vary but the heart of what is shown makes some connection to my life.  Not a bad way to start the day!