Your poem is not linear - it starts with the crow, travels elsewhere, then circles back to it.
After the crow, there is the river - meant in part as a metaphor for life? And I love the question: "At its mouth, has the river arrived or left?" I suppose the answer is both.
When I think of a river - and knowing that you write from your home country - I cannot help but think of Mother Ganga, on her journey from the Himalaya to the ocean, but even rivers are not linear either - at least not in the broader sense. All water - eventually - is recycled, evaporated up into clouds only to fall again, somewhere. At any one moment there will be water in every river which has been there before, and is now there again, travelling on.....
And in this way, over geological time, every river is also one river. There will be water molecules in the river which flows past my home in Australia which - long ago - also journeyed down Mother Ganga.
I just discussed this with Meg, and she reminds me - of course - that the same is true for the water within us. Each of us is a little reservoir of water, temporarily diverted from a river, but still inevitably part of the vast water cycle..... moving on.....
As you say : "So much of life becomes
incoherent outside the present" - that "bubble" of the present that we live within - and we look backwards from it through the often unreliable window of memory, or forwards through the kaleidoscope of possible futures.
Thank you David and Meg! Absolutely right about the water cycle - outside and inside us. I love what you say about looking back through memory and forwards through possibilities. If the crow is the mundane present, life itself is more complex especially through the prism of time. Appreciate your insights so much!!!
They are clever, those crows...I saw a reel of some corvid placing a nut on a road so a car would smash it...And it waited till it happened! This after trying to first break it with bricks! Of course, I'm just convincing myself the crow is alright after your point about the plastic!! Thank you, Rosemary :)
I haven't listened to Air Supply in years... now I have to go listen to this song!! Thank you, Mahdi!! Brings back old days and old memories!! Some good :)
Reminds me of a line that burped into a bad poem decades ago: "when the real leaves you homeless, there is always the surreal." Our earth grief in irresolvable and forsaken -- all we can do is praise this breaking world and bear witness to the magnitude of it. A poesis -- perhaps even a pantheon -- there is still possible. Just don't expect ticker tape and marching trombones. The story after digests in a crow's belly.
As always, you ask the deep questions that give the reader pause, to consider. I love that there is a crow in your poem, and wish he wasnt ingesting plastic along with his sandwich. But such is this world we are living in. A wonderful read!
Ah! But let's take things out of reality and play them into art, tease them into questions that we can not answer: "So much of life becomes
incoherent outside the present. " See it as surreal, swirl, formless., with a small drop of action that leaves evidence: a stain on a beak. Another work of art.
The poem came from an innocuous lunchtime conversation - and quickly took off in a different direction!! Only the crow - the base mundane staying real!! Thanks Susan - no one close reads a poem better!!! ❤️
I really enjoyed this poem, Rajani.
I like these lines especially:
"Where does it go, the night that has
passed? So much of life becomes
incoherent outside the present. Reality
melting into irretrievable abstract."
I also like that the crow got to have their sandwich. ;)
Thanks so much, Neil. So much of reality is ridiculously mundane... and like a parallel track, the rest of life runs through us...or despite us!
Hi dear Rajani
Some wonderful questions here.....
"Something about life that is no longer linear."
Your poem is not linear - it starts with the crow, travels elsewhere, then circles back to it.
After the crow, there is the river - meant in part as a metaphor for life? And I love the question: "At its mouth, has the river arrived or left?" I suppose the answer is both.
When I think of a river - and knowing that you write from your home country - I cannot help but think of Mother Ganga, on her journey from the Himalaya to the ocean, but even rivers are not linear either - at least not in the broader sense. All water - eventually - is recycled, evaporated up into clouds only to fall again, somewhere. At any one moment there will be water in every river which has been there before, and is now there again, travelling on.....
And in this way, over geological time, every river is also one river. There will be water molecules in the river which flows past my home in Australia which - long ago - also journeyed down Mother Ganga.
I just discussed this with Meg, and she reminds me - of course - that the same is true for the water within us. Each of us is a little reservoir of water, temporarily diverted from a river, but still inevitably part of the vast water cycle..... moving on.....
As you say : "So much of life becomes
incoherent outside the present" - that "bubble" of the present that we live within - and we look backwards from it through the often unreliable window of memory, or forwards through the kaleidoscope of possible futures.
I do love your summation:
"At the end of a road that is not a road,
there is a fork. Both paths lead here.
Where you stand so close that the
distance between us can never be
bridged. Where do gods go, once
they are gone? Where do we?"
Where indeed....
The crow does not care.
Best Wishes - Dave :)
Thank you David and Meg! Absolutely right about the water cycle - outside and inside us. I love what you say about looking back through memory and forwards through possibilities. If the crow is the mundane present, life itself is more complex especially through the prism of time. Appreciate your insights so much!!!
A thought popped in David, perhaps the crow knows, we will never know what the crow knows.
Ha! Dear Geraldine....
Yes that is true. I have always thought of crows as knowing more than we might think....
D :)
In the face of such large questions, I feel a need to focus on small details. That plastic wrapper worries me, on behalf of the crow.
They are clever, those crows...I saw a reel of some corvid placing a nut on a road so a car would smash it...And it waited till it happened! This after trying to first break it with bricks! Of course, I'm just convincing myself the crow is alright after your point about the plastic!! Thank you, Rosemary :)
It's true they are very clever indeed. I'll allow that to convince me too.
God, or goodness, or goodbye…
Song: Goodbye by Air Supply
I haven't listened to Air Supply in years... now I have to go listen to this song!! Thank you, Mahdi!! Brings back old days and old memories!! Some good :)
I love the circulatory of this poem, Rajani, like a crow flying, and the internal rhyme and repetition in these lines:
'About being. Being — only because of the fleeing.
About becoming a river.
About the impossibility of stopping.
About turning to salt.'
Thanks so much, Kim. 🙏
gorgeous reflections deliciously framed by a crow eating a sandwich - perfection
Thanks so much, Samara.
Reminds me of a line that burped into a bad poem decades ago: "when the real leaves you homeless, there is always the surreal." Our earth grief in irresolvable and forsaken -- all we can do is praise this breaking world and bear witness to the magnitude of it. A poesis -- perhaps even a pantheon -- there is still possible. Just don't expect ticker tape and marching trombones. The story after digests in a crow's belly.
Thank you, Brendan...and you're right, the art comes out of the grief and we compensate the real with the surreal...
As always, you ask the deep questions that give the reader pause, to consider. I love that there is a crow in your poem, and wish he wasnt ingesting plastic along with his sandwich. But such is this world we are living in. A wonderful read!
Thank you, Sherry... and I'm hoping the crow got rid of the plastic!! Or whatever gods are waiting to save us, save the crows too....
I was just working on a piece that has this same flavor.......but it's an essay, so far.
Interesting where the form leads us! The one I'm writing now could be freeverse or a prose-poem...am thinking perhaps the latter!!
"The story sinks into an empty bench.
Formless, now that it has been told. Used. "
Ah! But let's take things out of reality and play them into art, tease them into questions that we can not answer: "So much of life becomes
incoherent outside the present. " See it as surreal, swirl, formless., with a small drop of action that leaves evidence: a stain on a beak. Another work of art.
The poem came from an innocuous lunchtime conversation - and quickly took off in a different direction!! Only the crow - the base mundane staying real!! Thanks Susan - no one close reads a poem better!!! ❤️