Stepping out of the Fray

With the Supreme Court nominee hearings taking place and the lively debate about them in social media, it’s been difficult to think of much else but politics. Last night I read a passage in Carrie Fisher’s second novel ‘Surrender the Pink’ that reminded me that sometimes you need to lift yourself out of the literal, the logical, the sequential to find grace and beauty.  Her words pivoted on pronouns that masqueraded as verbs, verbs that became nouns; a pen dipped in magical realism. This morning, @PercevalPress tweeted:

“Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form -- as the stuff of patterned artifice. -Martin Amis”

The same is true, if not truer of poets. We are allowed more brevity, more artifice, more levity and more gravity in the words we choose, and the cadence of their arrangement.

Habitat of Necessity

I have sought the rigid permanence

of square corners, of cold brick and plate glass

insulation above, insulation below, layering levels of illusions.

Sought safety from the fables we tell ourselves

of wolves and fairies and knights in shining armor

that seep through seams and relentlessly lay siege.

I’ve spackled the cracks, and hung the drapes

to keep everything in and everything out.

I have floundered in makeshift, spendthrift

feeble coverings of straw.

Reveled in the smell of danger,

breathed whisky and dreams.

Felt the sting and steady erosion of tears

joining the stream that displaces, that erases

the will to raise hands in the air;

ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

I have huddled in sweat lodges and bomb shelters

seeking mental health and homeland security

and other heavy imponderables.

Wandered through glass houses and ivory towers

crèches and cliff dwellings, houses of cards and words

with jokers wild tumbling me down, tumbling me down.

I’ve sought refuge in silos and hogans and ramshackle shelters

and the absolution of comfort.

I am finally learning how to build my house;

carving a floor of earth to cradle my body.

Molding the firm corners into smooth continuous curves;

Setting a framework with roof and walls of willow,

safe from wolves but open to the smell of spring.

Placing locks and latches beside windows, doors and skylights.

Shifting from intransigence to transience

with a safe room and an open sky.