Look what I found in my book Pure Nakedness:written first 1999 (and one more)
I Was Saying Silly Things
I was saying silly things, so I took a rest.
I took a rest from saying silly things.
I’d lost the knack of cracking codes,
Of penetrating life in odes
Without the accent on the four.
As you can see, the rest I sought I didn’t take,
A restless longing overtaking pause,
And still compelled to put it down,
Write phrase and clause;
However frail,
To infiltrate beyond the pale
Of ordinary vanity -the other six-
The devil and his vice-y tricks.
There’s much to sigh or cry about,
For as I sit,
My husband’s daughter’s former husband
And his father too, are lying
(One is dying)
In a hospital nearby.
Things can happen overnight.
(As I write or as God will.)
We choose to have our children
But God chooses when they die;
I refuse the lie
That lets me call things mine and my.)
I was saying silly things, bad construction in the line.
Maybe it’s come back: the depth, the poetry,
The right to write it down again,
The pondering and wondering,
The observations of the changes
Showing up and lying under
Pain, enchanted moments, joy.
Last night I saw a five-week boy,
Exquisite from his head to toe.
From day to day I go around observing change.
All I can say is, life is strange;
That underneath one must believe
(There is no way one can perceive)
That pattern’s shawl of ritual
Has truth behind each metaphor custodial,
Each myth and tale,
Each truth behind a Holy Grail:
Life’s quest, life’s life, life’s eye, life’s trail…
And I wind up saying
Rather silly things that matter, after all.
I Was Saying Silly Things 10.30.1999/revised 7.14.2014/revised again/3.26.2020
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; God Book;
Arlene Corwin