10.29.15

Real posts coming, I swear.  I have been sick and it's thrown all of my rhythms off. Make do with drive-by posting for now?




Swimming



Carl Phillips



Some nights, I rise from the latest excuse for
Why not stay awhile, usually that hour when
the coyotes roam the streets as if they’ve always
owned the place and had come back inspecting now
for damage. But what hasn’t been damaged? History
here means a history of storms rushing the trees
for so long, their bowed shapes seem a kind of star—
worth trusting, I mean, as in how the helmsman,
steering home, knows what star to lean on. Do
people, anymore, even say helmsman? Everything
in waves, or at least wave-like, as when another’s
suffering, being greater, displaces our own, or
I understand it should, which is meant to be
different, I’m sure of it, from that pleasure
Lucretius speaks of, in witnessing from land
a ship foundering at sea, though more and more
it all seems related. I love the nights here. I love
the jetty’s black ghost-finger, how it calms
the harbor, how the fog hanging stranded just
above the water is fog, finally, not the left-behind
parts of those questions from which I half-wish
I could school my mind, desperate cargo,
to keep a little distance. An old map from when
this place was first settled shows monsters
everywhere, once the shore gives out—it can still
feel like that: I dive in, and they rise like faithfulness
itself, watery pallbearers heading seaward, and
I the raft they steady. It seems there’s no turning back.



I like this real and metaphorical navigation, and can relate to the feeling of being out in town at night, but not ready to be done with the night. It is also nice to think of our lives as a saga or odyssey, it makes the events more weighty and important. I know I would like to think of my life as important, even though we know the opposite to be true. (Or maybe make important small things that ordinarily wouldn't be important. Especially in the face of "Everything/ in waves, or at least wave-like, as when another’s/ suffering, being greater, displaces our own, or/ I understand it should, which is meant to be/ different,") Although if the speaker is looking for importance amidst the chaos of the other lives they are a part of, perhaps without trying to minimize the struggles of the other people, they can look to this part for comfort: "I the raft they steady", if we imagine that as a transformative craft rather than the more literal image of an oceanic coffin. (Now the issues of the peripheral people are starting to look really heavy!). Hope you like.