The Hour
Maybe the moment recurs daily at six, when commuters,
freed from the staring computers,
elbow and bump in unsought intimacy on a station
platform with you, and frustration
rots what is left of your strength. Maybe the hour comes after
dinner, when televised laughter
seeps from a neighboring room; maybe the time is the dead of
night, when you ponder, instead of
dreaming. Whatever the time, you will escape it—by sinking
down with a book, or by drinking
secretly out in the dark studio, or by unbuckling
pants on a stranger, or chuckling,
one with a mob, in a deep theater. Soon, though, the hour
comes to corrode all your power,
pleasure and faith with the damp dread that it daily assigns you.
How you evade it defines you.
Poem: "The Hour" by Michael Lind, from Parallel Lives. © Etruscan Press, 2008
... sometimes NPR feeds me just what I needed to hear.
Posts
3 comments:
that is a good one Zee. How do I 'evade' it? hmm..I'll have to ponder over that one. I think if 'one' is not accustomed to meditation (said she who does not), evading is an automatic. I can only imagine that when you know how to be in the 'now' and let the 'dao' come through you in meditation or 'life', then you'll have no issues having to evade that 'hour'.. (I think my 'hour' came last fall when I crashed.. too much evading can be a bad thing!!)
hugs
Ingrid
beautiful poem. very intimate, very invasive and very voyeuristic.
Yep guys and gals - I usually only post originals, stuff I write myself. But when I listened to this one this morning, it struck a chord, it stood out above the crowd of syllables printed and written every day.
The picture by the way is the moon rising on main-street in Vinalhaven, just above the hose of an pop artist who got famous in the late 60's with a LOVE screen design. I guess even the US postal service had stamps printed with his logo. He is homosexual and a fabulous talker. Only met him twice though 'cause he is shy (and I am not gay).
All the best - the Zeeman.
Post a Comment