This morning it was still mostly dark when I left for school, though you could tell, if you had any doubt, that the sun would make an appearance. The sky was well past the vivid cobalt sort of blue it gets just before it really gets light. There seems to be more of that almost dark in the morning hour, but I think that's probably because the evening hour is busier. If you only get one time to notice things, it seems the morning is more suitable for this. At least it's the time I have more . . . time. Every time I think of the concept of more time, I am reminded forcibly of the fact that we all get the same number of hours in a day; the rich can't buy more and the poor can't sell it. Time is time for all, though you can experience it differently, waiting for the dentist sure seem a lot quicker than waiting to see a new movie, or the trees leaf out in the spring. Painful things can sometimes seem to rush right at us while the joys might just mosey along.
The poem today came in my in box from Poets.org. I don't often use poems from there, but sometimes they are just what I am looking for, as this one is. Who can say what I speak for . . ."I will tell you/ one thing today and another tomorrow" . . .
Characteristics of Life
A fifth of animals without backbones could be
at risk of extinction, say scientists.
-BBC Nature News
-BBC Nature News
Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.
I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.
Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
one thing today and another tomorrow
and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.
I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
I speak for the snail.
speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.
I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.
Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
one thing today and another tomorrow
and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.
I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you? You, in
your cubicle
ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter
all day.
Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that's all you know to ask of me.
Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of
distances
between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
I will speak
the impossible hope of the firefly.
You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must
between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
I will speak
the impossible hope of the firefly.
You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must
understand
such wordless desire.
To say it is mindless is missing the point.
such wordless desire.
To say it is mindless is missing the point.
Camille Dungy
When Dawn wrote of the hummingbirds perhaps longing for their mate or home, flying across the gulf every fall to weather somewhere . . . more to their liking, I thought of that when I read this poem. "Ask me what I know of longing . . ." Everyone on the earth must have their own peculiar longing, specific to them that no one else might understand, something they keep secret, that longing for something they can't share because they have never found words for it, the impossible hope of the firefly and poet alike. This whole poem just went from one poignant thing for me to another. I have a nautilus shell on the bathroom counter, and it has never been silent, not for a moment. The air around it is full of the sound of the deep ocean, and that silence speaks of great depths where we cannot live, yet we can be reminded there are lives there. The people in offices and cubicles surely understand longing on a day like this when the sky is so impossibly blue and the air is a tincture of summer's end, warm with a sharp edge, cutting you with a thin sliver of chill. The wordless desire we have to do no harm, to keep all the things that are vanishing, to hold on to them if we can, remember them, even mourn them, while we are the ones rushing through them like every minute's heartbeat. You can see the poet is talking about me when she says "as consistent as anything alive on this earth". For me this poem is like the day, so much longing, seeing so many things standing in so many different lights, that the more I read it, like the Dawn sent yesterday, the more I loved it. "To say it is mindless is missing the point", so my wordless desire has no point, it just exists in the space of this blue and clear early, very early, fall day!
When Dawn wrote of the hummingbirds perhaps longing for their mate or home, flying across the gulf every fall to weather somewhere . . . more to their liking, I thought of that when I read this poem. "Ask me what I know of longing . . ." Everyone on the earth must have their own peculiar longing, specific to them that no one else might understand, something they keep secret, that longing for something they can't share because they have never found words for it, the impossible hope of the firefly and poet alike. This whole poem just went from one poignant thing for me to another. I have a nautilus shell on the bathroom counter, and it has never been silent, not for a moment. The air around it is full of the sound of the deep ocean, and that silence speaks of great depths where we cannot live, yet we can be reminded there are lives there. The people in offices and cubicles surely understand longing on a day like this when the sky is so impossibly blue and the air is a tincture of summer's end, warm with a sharp edge, cutting you with a thin sliver of chill. The wordless desire we have to do no harm, to keep all the things that are vanishing, to hold on to them if we can, remember them, even mourn them, while we are the ones rushing through them like every minute's heartbeat. You can see the poet is talking about me when she says "as consistent as anything alive on this earth". For me this poem is like the day, so much longing, seeing so many things standing in so many different lights, that the more I read it, like the Dawn sent yesterday, the more I loved it. "To say it is mindless is missing the point", so my wordless desire has no point, it just exists in the space of this blue and clear early, very early, fall day!
No comments:
Post a Comment