This astonishing poem articulates, for me, the hush of the present moment, as I breathe into these end times of awe and wonder, as I pay attention to this day’s “threat” of impending In-Diana thunderstorm.
Eerie. A sense of swirling into impending catastrophe. Of the layered structures of civilization crumbling; of the ego, that “identity” programmed through seven decades into layered rigidity, dissolving, “on an atomic level.”
Yes. I too, give myself back, to the wind.
Thank you, Janet Phelan.
(I am so sorry, I tried a number of times, but wordpress would not hold the spacing between the lines. So I inserted place markers instead. Here is the original.)
November 14, 2013
by Janet Phelan
____
This year
I abandon the future
It took me this long
To figure out
It no longer exists
__
I bury the package of seeds
Chard, cherry tomatoes, parsley
In the drawer behind
The pictures of my past
Parents, friends, weddings and birthdays
Parties on boats and expensive hotels
Evaporate as if printed on invisible paper
__
All lines merge on this point
This particular and irrevocable now
__
This place where I reside is a parenthesis
It brackets what no longer exists
And what will never come to be
__
And is beginning itself
To break down
On an atomic level
__
The adobe walls melt at my touch
The roof is leaking twilight
And the wind clatters through the eaves
Knocking off tiles and wooden beams
__
It has been raining for as long as I can remember
The roads in are washed out
And the mountain is half submerged
__
It is almost the hour
__
Something has been out there for a very long time
Ten years ago, on the edge of the half life of a sleeping continent
I first heard it
Ricochet through the rooms of my drowning
__
I now hear nothing else
__
I made preparations
Whatever has been left undone
Will only increase the burden now
__
I hoist the pack onto my shoulder
As the walls dissolve around me
__
And I give myself back
To the wind
