When I tell you
Thank you to
at Poetry Pals for this prompt (full post here). I think there’s so many directions to go with it.“Here’s a simple prompt to play with…
When I tell you xxxxx (or you could mix this up with - when I do xxx), what I mean is….yyyyyy
“I was thinking about this idea that sometimes what we say isn’t always exactly what we mean. Or has another layer that is left unsaid. You could even start with the line, ‘Most days’ if that helps you to slide you right in to some writing.”
When I tell you, “I’m going to load the dishwasher” what I mean is, please let me be by myself. Please let me disappear into a task that makes more sense than the blade of infidelity slicing than the gray finger of cancer pressing than the weight our daughter keeps losing. Loading the dishwasher means that I arrange in a symphony of groups and lines spoons with spoons, forks with knives plates leaning against bowls, like friends who sling sleepy arms around each other. The rows of mugs are more reasonable than the exquisite, invisible needs radiating from each hour of the day.
I want to restack this, but it feels too personal, and somehow I do not feel like it is my place to reprint it on the internet.
Even though, of course, I read it on the internet.
This is a pretty brilliant expression of a feeling common to us all when we take comfort in doing a simple thing that can be done, in the face of the huge swirling complex of everything that we are barely able to influence.
Margaret Ann, I have been meaning to ask... Every time I read the name of your publication it brings to mind an aria from Tristan and Isolde that includes the expression: "I am myself the world".
Which is an expression that has significant philosophical import to me.
In your abundant free time (I am making an inside joke having been a parent of young ones myself) you might on a wild chance find a new book by the physicist Christoff Koch to be interesting. He uses that phrase as the title.
Thank you for an excellent poem.
The peace of calming repetitive tasks— just to be a body with hands sorting, rinsing, stacking—when you need to stop thinking. . . I feel you, Margaret.