This week, we’re back to a new poem by yours truly. Interestingly, whereas the opening segments of The One posts on the first two Mondays this month are about birth, today’s poem is about the juxtaposition of life and death – the two great matters. Actually, the “juxtaposition" is between youth and old age, but close enough.
Last summer I attended my 50th high school class reunion in central Wisconsin in a town called Marshfield. I was seventeen when I graduated from high school, so that got me thinking about the last fifty years, as well as the zero-to-thirty years I may have left. (One just doesn’t know the “when” spoken of in the poem.) I suppose the one exception is an attempted suicide, but even with that intention, not all endeavors have the desired result.
I’ve attempted to speak the truth (as I understand it) with a light touch. That should please some Almanac readers who have asked me to “lighten up.”
Eulogy for Seventeen
The seventeenth year now seems a visitation
Elders at senior centers join in commiseration
about aches and pains and surgeries
and how they lived their well-remembered seventies
At seventeen, unnatural history begins
whose end, though predictable, does not divulge the when
But back to seventeen when all things can be mastered
and few rarely see eventual disaster
‘Tween seventeen and eighty, all manner of
conjured partners and multi-offspring dominate
late parties, days of toil, leave no time to contemplate
After seventeen, years slide smoothly through narrow
channeled gates - green water, mosquito-desperate
Roaring alive on the planet of seventeen
All aglow on the continent of twenty-three
Full of grace in the poised country of thirty-three
Fifty-five arrives with its deeper lines on faces
Sixty-eight leaves all years behind with no traces
Next, dead-reckoned for an islet of seventy
Inevitably, an island tree shinnied up to eighty
Seventeen once throttled life like ‘twas forever
assumed true and fine adorned with youthful trimmings
Now, as the unfailing elegy draws nearer
we spy greying tinges stirring cliff-hanging fears
The anxious disbelief in decades not in years
The shock of staring into the rearview mirror
Seventeen believes this staring truth must be false
refusing to relinquish youth’s sweetness’ thrall
wrapped in memories close and warm before the fall
If truth be told, an end will come, but no matter
because we know not when that end comes pitter patter
Each of them emerges. Seventeens shine briefly
Then darkly through the looking glass comes their leaving
Background:
Reunions – high school, family, military, etc. – definitely bring up thoughts of former times, and put those times in a vaulting context. When young, most people feel that time goes way too slowly: when will I get out of these diapers; when will I been done with school? how long before my birthday? Christmas? And on, and on, and on. Of course, at some point that varies with the individual, time begins to speed up. Maybe it’s at 18, or 21, but certainly most of us feel the tick, tick, tick at ages thirty, forty, fifty – every decade turning us over into experiences based on every decade before.
Many decades ago, a valued teacher of mine advised me to “live with death looking over your left shoulder.” I’ve tried to heed that advice, meaning living so I would have minimal regrets, not pass adventures by due to fear, and doing my best to be kind and compassionate to others and to myself. Like most, I only see the measure of these things through the eyes of others, and as I understand their understandings of me. I’ve often thought that people who are easy on themselves reach old age with fewer regrets. At least they’ve mostly pleased themselves. On the other hand, those who tend to be hard on themselves reach elder status with perennial questions, illusions that they have not met imaginary goals, and wondering what could have been done differently, better, more completely. Both camps have one thing in common: time is usually too short.
A wise and revered monk once lay dying on his bed. His followers gathered around him, weeping and praying for him. One monk leaned close to the dying man and asked, “Venerable one, do you have any words for us?” All those present expected the holy man, who had lived a quiet life of prayer and deep enlightenment, to utter something profound as he left his mortal coil. He said, “I don’t want to die.”
Perhaps there is a lesson here? No matter how long or short a life, almost all persons come to the end with the monk’s statement. Simple as that. Profound as that.
Exploration 1: Is this poem humorous? Morose? Both? Neither?
Exploration 2: What does the following line refer to: “channeled gates- green water, mosquito-desperate”? This line is probably the only one in the poem that is ambiguous.
Exploration 3: Did you notice what grows smaller with each stanza starting about in the middle of the poem?
Humorous,yes. The meter sees to that. And bittersweet as well. Lost innocence. Educated naïveté.
ReplyDeleteChannelled gates must be mom and dad.
What grows smaller? The amount of time the poet has left.
Another dying sage said "I know what life is. Soon I'll now what it is to be dead."
Not something he'll care to share."