Thoughts on life meaning
A POEM FOR CARL SAGAN
(and NASA’s Natalie Bataha, who discovered Kepler 10)
“In order to let go, you have to be there
In the first place,” Carl said.
Walking and seeing, perceiving and feeling,
Attention must be paid:
Inspecting grains of sand, glimpsing exo-planets,
Forgetting the self,
Neurons interconnecting, concocting recipes,
Not “buying off the shelf.”
Though we are merely stardust
And to stardust must return,
Our flickers of light, in the midst of dark matter,
May provide some insight.
Seated at desks, our students
Bow their heads to assignments.
Paperwork gives the cocaine
Dream its fatal enchantment.
We chain Prometheus until
He eats his heart out.
Then Hercules stalks our streets
Burning, raping and mugging.
In Vienna young white horses
Levade, courbette and capriole,
Their coltish leaps and gambols
Encouraged into dance steps.
And kittens spring onto draperies,
Laughed at and applauded,
Or ricochet off chair arms
Practicing rat entrapments.
Not, like human children,
Rebuked into passive conformity
Which will issue in a ninety-year-
Old silent scream.
Like a koala bear on eucalyptus, she clings to her mother’s
Leg, howling. Her father plucks her loose
And carries her to bed. He says nothing. Enough
Words have steamed the air from the pressure cooker
Of the long day’s doings from nursery school
To carnival. I recall, if he does not,
A time when he too cried unconsolably
All the way to the doctor’s office and back
Because a new and tired mother slapped
A toddler who had thrown her glasses on the floor. The
prescription
Issued by an annoyed pediatrician was aspirin for her
And more tolerance for him. I tell this tale
To my daughter-in-law, who is sponging magic marker
From the carpet with regret for the scolding she has given my
grandchild.
You are a camera who
Freezes my picture in poses
I never intended. “Wait!”
I cry. “That isn”t me!”
But you snap the shutter
And finally mount the prints
Forever in red leather albums
Like flies dead in amber.
Create me instead on videotape..
Showcase my best or better days.
Feature me friendly, zestful,
Dancing or singing. Today
The pond is a frozen mirror
Inviting any skaters design.