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Stimulus: "Affirmation" |
By Donald Hall, the newly appointed Poet Laureate
To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.
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| Posted on 06/18/2006 |
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ALL RESPONSES |
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Age gives not a whit to your humane
Concerns. We roll and grind
With worm and oxidation,
With driers and slow mouths
So tiny, you cannot see
Nor count them all.
Whether you approve or not,
We will meet you in the end-
Your revels a tether as easily
severed as a child's smile
From a fallen ice cream cone.
Dance, but do not presume so much
Of what is loss, and what is cost. |
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A broken rod, sandals blown into
the water, half a perch devoured
by a snapping turtle
A hundred pound pack, uphill. The turtle’s head
as big as a pork hock. A perch
bitten in half. Black flies, leaving
their legacy.
A fan, turning slowly, humming, moderate breeze coming in through
windows.
Pump the water from the well. Cold, pure, clean. No chemicals
or smells. Water. Ruined by Kool Aid, supplemented by cheap red wine.
The best water in the world, out of a hand pump in the forest. Snapping
turtle, a dinosaur, spiked tail, webbed feet, with
claws, and a huge pointed head.
It has been raining a bit. Blue, perfect sky, turned cloudy gray.
We don’t care. Pain points appear, black fly bites, on a knuckle,
on an elbow, working their way in, nesting for a long vacation.
Sleep well tonight, and stories over dinner. Trips to Chicago, rockets
to Mars. And the music. The quiet, insect, chanting drone of the fan, birds,
wind. Feelings from elation to disgust, I turned
off the fan and the lights. Just wind and birds. Looking
out the window, leaves reveal their pale undersides with each
breath. Approaching solstice, blue heavens return with red
filigree in the evening, and hundreds of small cobalt patches
dancing through the throbbing trees.
Clouds swimming in a lake
A pot of water for oolong
alone, early, and no one
knows what time it is
First, tea
The wind will die
The inside of the cabin
is comfortable, in appearance
Everything has a soft, warm quality
natural, organic, a mood, an
environment
We are not in a city, or
a farm. This place only exists
to be part of what surrounds it
forests, wild animals, lakes, fish
four lights inside
two out
two burners
a small refrigerator
a wood stove
open windows with screens
it feels good
Sitting here at this ancient table
alone, drinking
oolong tea in the morning, in a
cabin painted into a
Monet canvas
One might assume the muse would
descend upon me in the flesh
To be honest, though, I describe what I
see and feel. It is a start.
I move to the front porch, sit in a daze, listening
to loons. There are lots of things worth forgetting
about. I don’t know what they are any more. They
try to return, but they have no place here.
The beginnings of rebirth, three nights turning. Just
a wish, a dream, moving back and forth.
Catharsis is overdue. So is a shower. A shower, soft
water, fine water. What time is it?
Every muscle aches, and the cheap wine is good
To lay down and sleep, but Ah, I don’t dare. Is
this the moment for idyllic reverie? Yes.
Campfire at dusk. Be there.
As the oolong brews, and the
sun rises towards me, I still
do not know what time it is.
They sleep
Fishing Deep
To find what hides there on the bottom,
sniffing at the mud, half-asleep in near darkness
What is light for those that sleep there?
Bellies full, pondering the next feed. Or not.
It is a time of relaxation, slow movements,
and coldest luxury. A shiny lure, dancing before
their eyes, timed correctly, may appear as a dream
and cause them to stir, to feel hunger.
This is not real. Work is real, technical glitches are real
incompetance is real. We only experiance natural beauty
and mental relaxation a couple of weeks in the year; it is by far
the exception
Sad
I lay in bed, thinking when I should have been sleeping
I pictured myself adrift in a lake, swimming with no boat in sight
pushed like a canoe, by wind or current, as it was growing darker
I tried to swim to shore, but as it became darker,
I lost sight of land. I tread water in pitch black darkness, for hours,
for eternity, in nothingness.
This was pre-birth, or death, or the way life is. It was chaos, and peace.
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Dixie cup elation,
understanding sidewalks,
as they meander against
another,
vapor of Kool-aid,
click, clack,
mid-morning smile silhouettes.
“Tanner was here” yawns,
the shiftless, tortured picnic,
table,
picking up pennies from
Mommy, Daddy, and one,
jovial,
snow-bearded neighbor,
cleaved to his red Buick.
Until the park bulbs dim on,
flickering portent,
of the death bed,
dirty feet leading the way,
hugging my yellow jar of,
things back.
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"The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the chief distinguishing differences between mankind and the animals... For example, John D. Rockefeller gets his feeling of importance by giving money to erect a modern hospital in Peking, China, to care for millions of poor people whom he has never seen and never will see. Dillanger, on the other hand, got his feeling of importance by being a bandit, a bank robber and a killer."
- Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Yet after everything, my dear, there's still
Sunday afternoon
in midsummer, when even the park is far away
and we sit on the back steps watching
cottonwood seeds float by.
The flowers we planted are spent
and the wild flowers that we did not
hold riots in the yard
and across the street by the school the flag
jangles against its pole, disconsolately.
I'd rather discover
friends than win them.
I'd rather love people than influence them.
And there's a shady sidewalk called anonymity
we're fond of walking down
just to the spot where we wave to Dillanger
and the factory owners and perhaps the great Garbo -
those idiots and their parade - and then turn home.
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(i)
is more than wood
burning, is more
than living beyond
the chippewa river
where drums beat,
letters are written
to life long friends,
where breezes cross
water as softly as
skin beneath
a mother’s wrist
(ii)
on friday i wanted her
to be kneaded into bread,
set near a warm window
sill with a damp towel,
allowing her to rise
and feed me once more
(iii)
by sunday she couldn’t see
me anymore; it was raining
and i watched my words,
pale as newsprint, running
together. being no longer
useful, i folded them carefully,
threw them away
(iv)
a blue carnation,
white chrysanthemums
myself withering in place
of last rites, until finally,
a well deserved day off |
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It is better to have loved and kept
Her alive
Torn elegies won’t grow beyond the
Dammed up homage
No grand hall arabesques still play
Where hearts once pierced the future
Having found that long lost letter do you see the words
Are only a big broken arrow towards
What’s left on
The cutting room floor
What is said is made flesh and flesh is nothing
Without its passing
The forgotten moments you recall
After the poem is done
Are the ones elusive to letters, where she is always
She alive
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In the winter woods
the trees settle in
to their true shapes,
and the distant lake
becomes visible. |
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