the year is half-gone into eternity,
and time’s black hole does not relent.
what is this place where we believe
we can acquire anything, but always
leave empty-handed and alone?
we live in a slumber where dreams
seem like reality while existence spills
from our bodies like jet fuel behind
a damaged aircraft in mid-flight.
under the surface
we are free. all spirit
and essence waiting
for brokenness,
for the slightest flaw,
for an opening
where the true self
emerges as light,
escapes into being.
* Written last year in response to Robert Okaji’s beautifully haunting poem “His Softness”. After reading it several times, the phrase “somewhere, under the surface, / unattached” stayed with me and prompted this poem.
there is a place inside of you,
a place that can never escape.
a place where you once were
but is now inescapably within
your mind. it haunts you,
but you haunt it too. you keep
going back, and it revisits you.
landscape changes as a setting
sun’s long shadows fade away.
presence, awareness,
awake now and breathe.
inhale. exhale. burdens
give way to small birds
sounding transformation
from nights into dawn.
all is silent in between.
are you here? waiting
at the entrance of a crumbled soul?
arranging the rubble to resemble
a door and knocking upon a hollow shell?
i am here. unable
at times to answer as i clear a foundation
and wonder whether i can build something
with a clearer view of our horizon.
a politician mailed a half
dollar to me and asked
for fifty in return to help
his cause. i have heard
preachers on tv promise
the same things in different
ways, always asking for more.
so i buried the half dollar
in a corner of the churchyard,
near the dead politicians
and tv preachers, imagining
the squabble taking place
on the shore when charon
stretches forth his ghastly hand.
breath and bones, heaps of walking ash
burned badly by life. the skin is an urn
lined with scenes and scars. smoldering
fires flame within as we exhale. smoke
dissipates slowly toward the silent stars.
what was it like for him
those few days when he slipped
somewhere beyond our universe,
peering into it somehow
as a child admires a snow globe,
lifts it, shakes it for a moment,
and waits for the exact time
to reappear within the chaos?
the lips of the dead
whisper no final words.
no comfort, no signal
of pain or rest. no parting
blessing or curse. only
the child’s vacant eyes
that never saw it coming.
– written after parkland
One of my favorite poems by Seamus Heaney.
Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
Postscript was first published in The Irish Times. From Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney. © 1998 by Seamus Heaney.
Awaiting the Images 