disaster

Today is the 102nd anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic's collision with the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. The ship sank at 2:20 a.m. on the 15th. This is a poem by Sandy Yannone, my dear teacher and the beloved Writing Center director at Evergreen. She and I share a curious, or maybe not-so-curious, devotion to the Titanic disaster. This poem speaks to much more than that though. It's maybe one of my favorite poems ever.


Maiden Voyage

"I remember this now: a Sunday,
as they mostly always were, late fall, I was
bending over into the back seat of the car
to rearrange the automotive landscape.

Her fingers reached over, gently pressing
my spine like silver flute keys.
I heard the solo even as I felt it, fingered
for a long time, and by long I mean

still. I wish I had straightened up, turned,
and kissed her, a new song,
a tender response to everything
I’ve felt since and after and before

and after her playing my flute. Or
was her hand just warming up,
practicing, before it would leave, needing
a stable place to tap out its questions,

send telegraphs into the sky like Harold Bride
and Jack Phillips sent for days before –
tapping out jovial messages from the first
class passengers on board Titanic

in their delirious denial – so busy
the new Marconi operators could barely keep up
with the news flooding in of impending ice
like the fall before a brutal winter. Except

it was spring, as it is now, just weeks away
from the anniversary of her sinking. I wish
I had made a move that afternoon, used
the binoculars to see the iceberg in time

to turn the ship, to turn around and look
back to kiss her one first time, fold up
like a nautical chart. But I stayed half
bent in the car, asleep at the helm,

while her hand circumnavigated my back. I kept
the memory of that and wrote this poem
instead. And Jack will go down with the ship,
And Harold Bride will survive, and I’m not sure

which one I am and which one is she
or which relics of what we are to each other
will be recovered years later
from the depths of this sea, placed under

glass in an exhibit never called wreckage,
although that’s what all this is, and maybe
all a maiden voyage is ever meant to be."

the conversation

I've been shying away from writing because I have been standing at the edge of an ocean, dug in, while waves of truth and love wash over me, over and over and over, and I haven't had the time or words or perspective to synthesize all of it, or any. But I am seeing now that it just may not be the time for synthesis, but for living in the washing over and over, and expressing purely whatever it is that washes through me.

These are the themes.

Being vulnerable is probably the most important thing I've ever done.

"As it happens, the wall between us is very thin.

Why couldn't a cry from one of us break it down?
It would crumble easily, it would barely make a sound."

Rilke

 ~~~

Conversation is about finding understanding.

Breaking these walls

or discovering

that they were never there.

[Listen]

 

 [Talk to me]

Everything is a conversation.

Everything is a puzzle.

How do these two,three, four things

people, pieces fit together?

A puzzle.

How does my hand fit the rock?

Perfectly. Just there. 

Particularity.

My hand.

That rock.

Fit.

And so I climb

there,

that wall

and suddenly

the wall is not a wall

it is my life.

We are one.

~~~

Particularity.

Love particularly,

though

love

is not

particularly

particular

about who, what, how it loves.

Or it is.

I'll say it again though:

Love particularly.

Love the particularity of

his face

her voice

that sunset

my own words

that day.

That day.

That moment

of heart-shattering breath.

But then

love all-everything,

everyone.

Because

how could you not?

Because

one 

is all,

right?

[At last, I have to admit it. Because I stood at the edge of that ocean screaming in the night and I was screaming too, and the stars were there, and I was there, and there I was: one, all.]

But don't forget what you are bound to.

Don't forget the decay of time

and who you will rot with

 and where you will rot.

And don't forget

that tree

that you've placed your hands on and sung to 

songs of promise

a hundred times.

And don't forget

the particular slope of that land

that hand

that rock

the curve of that neck

of that lip

of that tooth

in his mouth.

Remember it like your tongue remembers the exact shape of the space inside your molars,

the exact edge of your incisors

overlapping

[over and over]

against each other.

~~~

The problem:

If you feel each particular thing

with this particular love

then you start to love 

every 

single

 inch 

of the world.

And then 

I'm afraid the particularity will start dissolve 

into the stale suburbs 

and crowded streets

of generality.

Because

who doesn't want to be the person

someone's swift-swimming eyes settle upon

and rest 

in the perfect peace of finally finding

what they'd been seeking

?

Who wants to be just one face in the crowd

in a sea of love? 

But love is a sea

washing over and over

me.

I fall 

and I fall 

and I fall 

in love

with everything.

~~~

So how do I know

who and what I belong to

except by 

continuing the conversation

hard as it may be

and it will be

and it is.



But this is probably the most important thing that I can do.

some lightness -- Old Man Mouse

 a delightfully funny poem by a hero of mine, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes


OLD MAN MOUSE

"In our first little two-room house,
a mouse attacked a candy wrapper
fallen to the floor
from the pocket of a jacket
hanging on a nail on the wall.

My husband and I suddenly awakened
with all the alarm of two pederdactyls
in too narrow a bed
confronted by a tyrannosauri of some sort
under
the bed.

Husband could just reach his cowboy boots,
but first shook them upside down
to make sure
no mouses in there.

He grabbed the broom
and chased mouse around the room,
both he and mouse exceedingly naked,
except for the one in cowboy boots
with penis and testicles swinging—
this was not the mouse.

As husband chased rodent,
the mouse suddenly stopped,
just stopped,
fell over and died,
right before our eyes.

Husband said slowly,
It must have been
a sick
mouse.

But I have a different theory.
Have you ever seen a man’s genitalia
from below?
I say mouse looked up,
saw dreaded hose monster jumping
around with its two great greedy eyeballs
bulging
and swinging,
and mouse had a bad heart.
Mouse just up
and died
of fright.

Or struck
down
by awe."

magnificent