Do Something
I don’t have a whole lot to say right now. Or rather, I do, but I don’t have much time to say it. The wi-fi is spotty (thank goodness) and I’m in Cape Cod for the week trying to write, trying to find a good rhythm for writing that I can take home so that I can get this manuscript in shape.I’m in your shoes this week. The very first prompt the instructor gave yesterday afternoon when we met for 15 minutes was “write down one thing you’ve never said aloud and bring it in an envelope to class tomorrow.” So if you’ve ever felt like I dish it but don’t take it, know the truth. More on all of this later. Right now I want you to read the poem below aloud three times.
Okay, well at least once? Read it aloud.
Your prompt is to imagine that something vast and magnificent that you admire–a particular mountain range, the pacific ocean, the colosseum–were addressing you. Do a little research about it if you need to, discover the metaphors in its history and properties and then write from its perspective. Start with “Yes, I see you…”
20 minutes dearhearts. I’ll be slow to respond this week, my apologies.
Sincerely, the Sky
Yes, I see you down there
looking up into my vastness.
What are you hoping
to find on my vacant face,
there within the margins
of telephone wires?
You should know I am only
bright blue now because of physics:
molecules break and scatter
my light from the sun
more than any other color.
You know my variations—
azure at noon, navy by midnight.
How often I find you
then on your patio, pajamaed
and distressed, head thrown
back so your eyes can pick apart
not the darker version of myself
but the carousel of stars.
To you I am merely background.
You barely hear my voice.
Remember I am most vibrant
when air breaks my light.
Do something with your brokenness.
2 Responses
Ever, Space
I see you. Of course I do.
I am everywhere; I contain you and all that you can imagine
and all that you cannot imagine as well.
You hold me in awe because you have used your
amazing minds, and have attempted to quantify me.
You spend entire lifetimes studying the meager drifting
of matter, of energy, that comes within your tiny, tiny
sphere of awareness. You apply your incredible minds,
and spend a huge percentage of the instantaneous pops
that are your lives, to interpreting whatever happens to drift
into your awareness.
But I am nothing; to your flash of consciousness I am eternal
and eternally nothing. Remarkable for that matter, those particles
which exist inside me.
You argue about me. About from where I came, about where I am going.
Am I aware? Am I a god? Which god am I?
How do you not realize that you are inside me right now,
acting and thinking and loving and grieving, building
and destroying… living!
Of what comparison
is my incomprehensible size
where atoms may drift alone for a billion years
and never touch another? Of what comparison
is a star’s life to the life of one single person…
the fusion of atoms for millions of years
is a child’s toy compared to everything
that happens in one moment of a human life.
I am space. I am the Universe. Because you cannot
comprehend me, you hold me in awe.
What I would give, to be one of you, for just a moment
and be alive?
I am nothing. You have life.
You are what I worship
what I yearn to understand.
I am eternal (according to your definition of eternal).
You are not.
Every moment you are alive, I entreat you:
Live.
Nate!!! So glad to see you here. And this poem, I’d never thought about being finite as a gift–or being infinite as a burden. ❤️❤️❤️