Passing Thought

She intended to sit there, awake but thinking of nothing in particular

. .. until it would be time to start preparing for bed. But it is hard to

think of nothing in particular after 87 years. Out of all those jumbled

decades heaped up behind, something will worm itself to the surface.

Celia Fremlin, A LOVELY WAY TO DIE

It must be peaceful to come to the end

of the writing, or need for writing, poems,

to wholly let go, like a cat on a lap,

heavy and boneless as unbaked bread dough,

of that constant attentiveness to the sea,

all weathers and tides, its bland seething.

Alert as if no others watched,

as if there had never been another

watcher, driven to know precisely

what is being uncovered or covered

if its near, sluggish graceless barings

show glint, slither, in the old weeds,

or afar, if from under the dark spread

with its tiny wavery quilting, there erupts

something that ducks down under again.

And, if envisioned, the ecstatic strain

and suspense of a try at validation

of mollusc, redworm, mermaid, monster,

something unseen because not looked at

or so brilliantly seen it died into fable,

something nobody knew for sure

was there, and nobody needed to know!

And unending doubt! Could one bring it back

(on the leader of a glimpse so slight,

handling the deep play so unsurely)

to the world, to its own true tremble of light?

It must be like just before a vacation,

the supper a careless improvising,

a soupkettle crammed with disparate leftovers,

everything kept, even dregs of wine,

bubbling together, the pot unwatched.

Those remnants of past, so much still good,

swell the soup with garbled excitement.

But when the chaos spits something up

which goes over the side and lands on the stove-

the spraddled fern of celery top,

bloodclot of an over-ripe tomato,

tough twig of splurged-on country ham slice-

the pure accident of its splat

is wiped quickly, guiltlessly away,

being nothing more meaningful than that.