Zippo in a windstorm
Zippo in a windstorm
ignition’s feeble click. The way
that hope, for a moment, seems
as good as oil, or the spark
that still makes a shock of light, even
without catching. So, it’s you.
You’re the one standing with your back to the wind.
Slouch your shoulders. Get real close.
Whisper. You hope to shield
for once,
from something,
since the last time
What’s the word for a ship
running headlong into evening, then turning starboard
away
toward the last?
A barge or maybe a catamaran,
both like flowers bent toward the sun
In that middle distance where there is only
night and nightsoon.
On the other side of darkness,
a small spacecraft got the closest
yet to touching the sun,
learning nothing from Icarus
in our astral kindergarten game
of dare.
Still shining on
this world we lost
sight of, rapt by the sick
-er shades
of green,
I hold
to you
hold to
Last week I shared some thoughts on the challenging relationship between hope, fear and awe. This poem is also in that lineage of thought and feeling.
This poem initially started with a snarky title “When a thumb war is a decree” and was a handful (ha) of stanzas that centered around a thumb image. It felt pretty forced by the end so I scrapped most of that and what persisted was the lighter image. It calls to mind the horror movie motif where someone tries to ignite their lighter in a dark room, but can’t. Instead, they just keep flicking it and you see fragments of the scene as a result. It creates a sense of imposing dread, like something is supposed to be revealed that shouldn't be.
I recently saw this article on us trying to touch the sun that, while certainly a feat in science and engineering, struck me as the most absurd pursuit. It sat with me for a month or two and then found its way here… we are the moth to flame!
I’ve been revisiting the poems of Jim Harrison this week. I always find his searching and comedic poems to be a balm when things feel out of reach. Similarly, I’ve been returning to some conversations with Jane Hirshfield. In one of the conversations, she read her poem The Stone of Heaven which has a line that I think, more than any other, sums up my relationship with making things:
Any woodthrush shows it— he sings,
not to fill the world, but because he is filled.
With Gratitude,