Annie Dillard: Our Original Intent

(Photo: Three of my boys, fishing and looking)

I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. An infant who has just learned to hold his head up has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment. He hasn't the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn. In a couple of years, what he will have learned instead is how to fake it; he'll have the cocksure air of a squatter who has come to feel he owns the place. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can't learn why.

-- Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Alterity

For dVerse OpenLinkNight. Short and sweet. Share your poem, long or short, polished or still in progress.

Alterity

That vast space between

I                            

                                 you.

Under

a gibbous moon,

philosophy failed,

and there I laid you

down, I laid you down.

Clowns are Freaking Scary

Paper regularly collects on my bookshelf. Articles I print out for later reading, birthday/holiday cards that I put aside for future disposal (just in case the giver happens to come by I can pretend to have saved their important well-wishes), time-sensitive mail that I fully intend to handle soon, school papers from the kids, and, best of all, artwork from the kids.

Yesterday I cleaned out my accumulation and found this drawing from one of my sons, probably dating from Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012. I don't know if I've seen anything scarier in my life.

It Is Enough

Anna got me thinking about willing, wishing, answering the call in her great post on dVerse Meeting the Bar. I put a few lines together, but nothing seemed to fit the prompt as well as this older poem, slightly reworked. My apologies to the few who may have already read this one. 

It Is Enough

I heard my share

of sermons, serving

time on straight-backed

pews, begrudging each

moment lost

                     to eternity.

My elders sat willingly           

in expectation

of heavenly reward, glad

to leave all worldly affairs,

glad to rest weary bones

if only for a moment.

They meant well.

I see that now, now

that my own bones

need rest, now that

I hope beyond all hope

to be free in the divine.

But we will never

decipher the mystery, try

as we might. Will we?

All we have from him

we already know,

written bold:

do not kill,

do not steal,

do unto others.

We stumble over what

we do not have: the

in-between-the-lines,

shrouded, incomprehensible,

written in sand, faint

markings that lead us

to belief or despair. I believe

it is enough to want

to believe. It is enough.

Technology and Me (by way of Hank Hill)

Bump

(Image credit: http://redwasp.net/)

Another dVerse OpenLinkNight, hosted by the illustrious Claudia Schoenfeld. Making connections. Here, I make a connection with a red wasp. We are not so different after all. Post your poem and join in!

Bump

In my pickup waiting,

window open to the day,

a red wasp lands

on the dusty dashboard

to clean her legs, rubbing

them earnestly on her

heart-shaped head.

Bump Bump Bump

She tries to take off,

lifting her cinnamon body

upward only to bounce

off the windshield. Again,  

Bump. She pauses, puzzled,

seeing the same blue sky

above, the familiar yellow

pine dust floating, the ordinary

soft air just overhead.

Bump.

With something akin to rage

her stinger pulses, in and out;

and I, with utter gentleness, lift

her to the open window,

knowing what it is

to go Bump.

Jerry Douglas Don't Mess Around

Mr. Flux, purely tearin' it up.