I know. What I said was that I would post the second of two found poems as part of ushering in the new year and before that I said I would explain the title of the publication next and doubtless there were other small promises that fell by the wayside. But life is lived and refuses to unfold neatly. An ex-cyclone is due to make landfall later in the night that I’m writing this and things feel unsettled. Outside the wind is announcing itself through the treetops. The lop-eared rabbits are skittish, darting here and there around their run, only pausing with one ear up to listen to the leaves shaking. The first monarch in the enclosure emerged from its chrysalis today, shook its wings dry and flapped off towards the storm.
Another found poem instead. Same topic. I’m not sure why I’m lately so preoccupied with the way we treat each other. I’m still working through it. I think on it a lot and observe it nearly as much. It feels like something I need to clear off the decks before I can move on to bigger topics - you can’t build a revolution if no-one can agree (although plenty of revolutions have ended up that way afterwards, as George Orwell noted). Our time is too hurried. The edges of us all are understandably frayed after three years of a pandemic. The replies I hear day-to-day are short, sometimes curt, though I try to smile back and move on; but we seem to have unlearned the practice of dialogue with strangers.
In the spheres I tend to move in this courtesy is crucial because our health is really a collective endeavour, a function of society. Ill-health hits the worst-off hardest and costs us all at many levels. Courtesy of the last few economic decades though, we’re still struggling to stop drinking the Kool-Aid of individualism. And beyond that there is an urgency to our global problems that means we don’t have the time to waste on the sole pursuit of being right ( I mean fifteen votes for the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives?).
Anyway as a brief aside, and because this is a place I can write as capriciously as the approaching gale, some might have noted the nod in the post’s title to a Star Wars meme. You might point out in that case I’ve used the contractions incorrectly because most commonly the quote is remembered as “These are not the ‘droids you are looking for.” But in fact it had the contractions in the original (aren’t and you’re) and if you don’t believe me watch the clip again.
I guess because it was Alec Guinness saying it, we mentally hear it without contractions. I actually think it would have been a better line without them. The story goes that Alec Guinness disliked being in the Star Wars movies, though they made him a lot of money, and thought the dialogue was crummy, so maybe he was right on that sentence. Otherwise contractions are fine I think. I’ve learned that you can’t use them in academic essays but they work perfectly well in other ones. Choosing them or not is a matter of rhythm and voice but, like slang and swearing, there’s no need to be snobby about them.
I’m writing short this time but here’s this other, other poem I felt the need to share, in full. I have this dumb idea that if you send these things out into the Internet ether it might percolate into the real world. The poem resonated when I read it because I feel like I’ve lived the scene she describes. You don’t have to have lived it, though, to relate to the analogy. It should be the simplest part of being human but it seems like it’s the hardest lately and maybe that’s something we should all think on a bit longer.
Shoulders
by Naomi Shihab Nye
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
Naomi Shihab Nye, "Shoulders" from Red Suitcase. Copyright © 1994 by Naomi Shihab Nye
Keep yourselves safe if you end up in the path of the bad weather!
I love that poem so much, thank you for sending it into the universe... I always believe that poems (like songs) have a very specific work to do in the world, they have to go and find their people - that’s why I *also* sent it to someone else I felt needed it. When my bro died a few people sent me poems and I held on to them, and often returned to them. Maybe we should remember that, when struggling to find a reason to write?! Anyway, I just love your essays and musings Alex - though behind on my substacks... Looking forward to catching up on what I’ve missed.