Teeth, Hammer, Blooms

 

I read poems of past love, lost love –

and remind myself: no love is ever

really lost, or past. But so many

varieties! Some are sweet-smelling,

pretty while they last, but lasting

no longer than ephemeral blooms.

Still I think fondly back on their

kindly delights. Memory preserves,

even if I seldom return to them now

to remind myself of that sweet scent,

that simple, delectable taste.

Others are like crashing hammers

tearing down walls, opening up

separateness into huge, inclusive 

vistas of possibility, expansions 

ready to be enriched with detail,

then further expanded, further filled. 

Eventually, though, there is nowhere 

further to go without a fading 

into the amorphous. After all, 

a building without fixed edges
becomes vague, collapses to nothingness.

I dwell longest on those loves that satisfy 

like good food: you can get your teeth

solidly into them; the taste remains

on your tongue; the memory rises at will

to your recollecting palate. They fed you,

nourished, sustained. Perhaps, if

there was an end (there is always an end

sooner or later, even if it’s not until death),

you can still return years later and feel

that old enrichment renewed – that old

groundedness which is the best enchantment.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #232, where we are asked to include in a piece of writing the three words I have used in the title of this poem. I am also inspired by reflecting on a couple of the poems in Rajani Radhakrishnan's new book, No Way Home.

A Case of Nirvana

‘A case of nirvana,’ she says –

and I imagine it packed in a suitcase,

a certain portion of it, to take as luggage 

everywhere I go … 

small pieces of nirvana

might be broken off for snacks

to sustain me while travelling, or

in liquid form it could quench my thirst

more than water (do we not all

thirst for nirvana?).

When arriving somewhere 

for an overnight stay on my way,

I might open my case and remove

a silken cloak of nirvana 

to wrap around my shoulders: 

light, yet warmly comforting.

What if I were to put the case down

and forget to take it up again?

I might spend forever after

searching for lost nirvana. Or perhaps

as in a spy movie, someone 

would deftly swap cases with me.

What would I get in exchange 

for my case of nirvana? And to what

secret vault would it go – hidden forever, 

or used to change the world?

The title is stolen from Rajani Radhakrishnan's poem A case of nirvana under a Ficus Mysorensis which is far more brilliant, beautiful and profound than this, and which I love in many ways. While I couldn't resist going off on this silly little tangent, and also must ethically acknowledge my source, I certainly don't wish to detract from the message of that source. Therefore you should please regard them as entirely separate, not to be compared in any way – and also go and absorb Rajani's wise and wonderful writing. (PS  She has seen this and enjoyed it.)

Sharing this with Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #205.

And sometimes it rains outside a poem …

 

... I want to say, to my friend who shows me

beautiful images of rain, beautiful words

for rain – inside rain poems, inside monsoons …

and I know they are real, those rains,

those pictures in poems; but I am inside 

the shell of my walls, thankful for light

(so many here now have none) as dark falls

outside, where rain has not stopped falling

for days, for long nights, as the rivers rise.

Two nights ago, on this hill, I hunkered down

pulling my walls in around me, waiting 

for cyclonic winds. They never arrived

and I’m thankful. Cyclone Alfred danced

and flirted with the swirling ocean, took 

his time coming to land, looked around

and headed a little further north of here 

than originally planned – a flighty cyclone,

a teenager, randomly changing his mind:

a playful lad, not a fighter. But although

he's not fierce, he's big. Even as, at last,

he calms and slows, the fling of his arms

casts rain clouds east to west, north to south,

day after day after day, night after night after 

night … while the winds hit places nearby,

power lines crash and tangle, trees are uprooted 

or lose their branches, as everywhere the rain

falls and falls, and all the rivers continue to rise.

Written in response to Rajani Radhakrishnan's 'Rain after rain after rain' post on Substack.

Shared with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #169: Answering Writing in Writing.

My Unbearable Silence

or, Why I’m Not Writing About Wars and the Extinction of Species

My unbearable silence

will not let go of me.

Words choke in my throat.

The poems don’t stumble

or fall – they are paralysed

before they start. Horrors

we can’t help contemplate

strike me silent. It’s not 

that I don’t want to cry out

against them. To scream or sob

would be release, if only

in that moment. To yell outrage

might at least make the point,

even to those who refuse to listen:

they could not afterwards claim

that the words were never said.

But the saying dies inside me

before being born, in the face of 

all the words said by others, unheard.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United, in response to Friday Writings #144; To speak up or stay silent? in which we are invited to consider a poem by Rajani Radhakrishnan. My title here, and the reference to stumbling and falling, quote that poem.