It was 36 words by Jill Alexander Essbaum.
The poem triggers a flapping of the heart valves, they are a-flutter.
But incongruence is the uninvited house guest that won’t separate.
Heart is warmed, it feels. Head is cold, it needs to Know, to Understand.
So I fill my hands with the shards of infinite ardors.
A generous cargo of ohs and oh wells.
And a strange half-wish to be a ghost.It is the thing I wish for most.
I work to bootstrap meaning.
Heart basks in “fill” and “hands” and “shards” and “infinite” and “ardors.”
Head jumps to “cargo,” “half-wish” and “ghost.”
Head begins to spin, to whirl – in Iyers jet lag. “Not quite on the ground…yet not entirely off it…I’m squinting; everything gets through to me, but with the wrong weight or meaning. I can’t see the signs, only their reflections in the puddles. I can’t follow the story, the arc of character, but something else — that inflection of a hand, this unregarded silence — comes through to me intensely.”
I circle and circle and circle over Essbaum, in a holding pattern, but I’m not clear to land.
I don’t get it.
But it comes through intensely.
Oh well.
Notes:
- Poem by Jill Alexander Essbaum from The Devastation (via Memory’s Landscape). Image: Nini Poppins
- Related Posts in the Driving Series
Incongruity as an uninvited yet permanent guest – oh yeah.
It does come through intensely.
Doesn’t it though.
Sublimely subliminal.
Awwww. Thank you.
I often find poems like that — I enjoy them, yet I don’t quite “get” them. So I let instinct take over and get what I can. Even if it’s a bit crooked…
I’m trying to do the same Claudia…
Oh, well. ☺
😃
Yes. That struggle to “get it.” Meaning comes close, then dances away. What?
Smiling. That’s it…👍
Mmmmm very deep Mr Kanigan. 🙂
Note to self: She thinks I’m not deep. 😃
No no, ha I do. I just really don’t get this! I think life should be simple. This seems complicated Mr kanigan, I like simple, easy. Breathe. That I like. 🙂
It’s simple, David. The head doesn’t need to get everything. You can still get it. Just feel it.
I’m workin’ this Helen. Long journey for me. For. Stage of rehab is awareness… 😃
I don’t understand it either..I can only come up with this stretch of my imagination…This makes me think of an art exhibit on opening night. She had such passion and no limits when she created… and now her ceramic piece on display, gets bumped and breaks, shattering into fragments of colorful, shards… she gathered the forever changed piece of expression in shocked, disappointment and grief…I wonder if the half ghost comment means she’d like to be the proverbial fly on the wall, undetected, so she could hear what people where saying?
Wow. Like the interpretation Christie.
just like it as it is, not trying to out-think it and i like it.
I’m trying to get there Beth