Oh those poems were so special.
Oh those poems are so gone.
How can that be?
Poems can't just disappear!
Six months of poems just like that!
Some of them didn't need me.
They went back into the ether.
But some of them tried to call.
The phone would ring at the worst time.
Hello?
Long silence.
Then, Hello
Mr Lindrof?
This is Niel.
I would hang up.
(Damn telemarketers!)
Little realizing that that was the voice of my poems
From far away
Where I was Mr Lindrof
Like dew evaporating
From the leaf of a vine.
...........................
I wrote to a friend: I don't think this is about losing memory but maybe it is about the evanescence of identity. Dew, in ancient Celtic culture was cherished as a very special form of water, a kind of distillation of the spirit of water, but to appreciate that tender perception something is required of us, that we surrender ourselves as the primary reference point of our existence. In this poem I am grieving the inexplicable disappearance of a body of poetry, but the poem is turning my attention to the real issue which is the evanescence of my identity which is no more permanent than the missing poems. (Those missing poems that are trying to reach me are beginning to forget my last name!) Maybe I need to be more like the ancient Celts and cherish the dew on the vine, instead of being a writer of poems or whatever else I am doing that I might imagine to be so important.
(Article changed on Jun 18, 2024 at 9:22 AM EDT)
(Article changed on Jun 18, 2024 at 9:56 AM EDT)
