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One Possible Death, Among Others
An ordinary day. The second of November. The sunlight
is thin and cool, just enough to sketch pale shadows of branches
on the fallen leaves. I would like to say this light is filmy
and sleek, like some undergarment tossed aside in a hurry,
puddled silk on the floor of the sky -- but it isn’t,
I am only wishing for you. Across the street,
the council of starlings debates hunger in a tall maple.
Somewhere colder, the bear you met by the river tears apart a rotting log
for a meal of white grubs, plunging claws in the soft wood,
fattening himself, as winter begins to glow around his heart.
The bear is real. That querulous note when you told me
of woman and hump-shouldered, hungry bear
staring at each other across the water, tensing -- as if
you might wish the bear had come for you --
if not for the pain, you said, what a glorious death --
that same slant music seems to quaver beneath the trees
when a cloud passes. If we must die, and we must,
why not silted into the warm fat of a wintering bear?
But how easily you could have slipped from this world.
Hearing, I wanted to lift your hips to me like a wooden bowl.
Do you see how knowing your transience
makes this a love poem? At once, for no reason,
the whole flock of starlings glitters, unfurls from the tree,
reels squabbling twice around the yard, and settles back.
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knowing our transience is every damn thing. if we don't know our transience no life can follow, certainly no love, only frailty and clutching.
ReplyDeletei touch these poems as though they are sleeping bears. one way or another they do eat me.
xo
erin
wow, some really gorgeous parts in this -
ReplyDelete"I would like to say this light is filmy
and sleek, like some undergarment tossed aside in a hurry,
puddled silk on the floor of the sky" - I absolutely love this, kind of disorientating in a great way!
and this -
"Somewhere colder, the bear you met by the river tears apart a rotting log
for a meal of white grubs, plunging claws in the soft wood,
fattening himself, as winter begins to glow around his heart." wondeful!!
the wooden bowl metaphor is surprising and even more surprising is that it works so well!
one of your most beautiful poems.
ReplyDeletebut what can a word like 'beautiful' say about that rawness of life which unfolds here, as if words themselves were, suddenly, fattening themselves with the substance of the world?
woman and bear, mythological figures from a time before the beginning of time. and the Poet touching them through the tissue of time itself, discovering in transience the seeds of eternity, as only he can do. and that final image which sets everything back into motion, forever, for no reason, because for no reason we move through time, we love and we die, we make poems to fight that love and that death, to sing that love and that death.
i have talked too much. but don't be mistaken, this is only to hide the fact that i am forever caught in the silent tension between woman and bear, in the silent tenderness of your lifting to you that wooden bowl of her body.
erin: it is odd, isn't it?, a love poem that imagines the beloved's death as a moment of joy ... but it is a great secret and a paradox -- only the transitory has real value, even in love, especially in love ....
ReplyDeleteMarion: thank you. the lines you mentioned are my favorites, too, and it helps, knowing that they work. the wooden bowl i stole from another poet :-)
ReplyDeleteRoxana: you see into me with such magic that i think you read the poem i would have written, if only i could turn myself into a bird rather than fumbling with clumsy words ... i know that you are caught in this tension and tenderness, and i am grateful for your being there :-)
ReplyDeleteI’m okay with the images and mythology of woman, bear, and the idea of love and transience, or love as transience and vice versa. But your descriptions of the sky as filmy underwear and the “council” of starlings “debating”—to be resurrected in the final couplet—those are are my favorites. They're so accurate, yet evocative too. A very nice poem.
ReplyDelete