Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Innate Timing

Unearthed,

we will look
like dreams

taken halfway to
fruition and suddenly
discarded, as child’s

toys are thrown
to the sand and

left idle, rotting in
the persistent sun,
fading plastic effigies.

Found,

below some
street or railway’s
new construction,

these things that we
hold in such high
regard will be only
faded newsprint from
a bygone age,

stripped of value
by that natural
process, that

innate timing we all
strive so bitterly to
renounce, yet again
falling, snapped back
ever more forcefully
by the invisible springs
of the universal will.

Unmasked,

we find ourselves
bones, our works
petty even in their
time, husks of flesh

animated by futile
yet somehow
poignant impulse
to these activities,
these unincorporated
tasks which save us
from that great, fearful
ogre,

that nothing,

that grim lack
of even the
illusion of

meaning.

4 comments:

Patrick M. Tracy said...

Readers:

I just wanted to say that I'm not entirely happy with the spacing on this one. It was the closest I could manage to the actual look of the document, considering the limitations of html. So...if you disagree with it, I do too.

Thanks.

Bill said...

I've often pondered 'artifacts' I've found. A discarded toy, a single shoe and wondered about the previous owner... and what might have happened.

Again a common chord here... all the things we do to attach meaning to our time here.

I don't know why this piece brought this line to mind...

"I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever feeling sorry for itself."

Thanks, as always your snapshots of the human condition touch me.

Patrick M. Tracy said...

Ken,

One must laugh at the absurdity of life and then let that knowledge slip away to the back of his mind. Any other way is a road to madness.

Bill,

Somehow, there is a special gravity to the things that are left behind, discarded in the midst of some long-gone activity. They make you wonder, and your mind tries to encompass what a future generation might think of your own scattered leavings.

Thanks, both of you, for coming over once again. I wasn't sure a few days ago if I had any more "ammo" for this blog. I'd gone a while without being moved to write a poem, and wondered if the spirit had moved on. I guess it hasn't, at least for another few days.

S.L. Corsua said...

Ahh, another masterpiece with such intensity as to make me indulge in philosophical musings. At 5AM, too, on a cold Saturday. Heehee. A conducive time of the day to reflect.

Ever so often, a certain friend and I would spend hours and hours on philo-talk. Anyway, she once asked me what I thought the meaning of life was. I told her that it would depend on a case-to-case basis, that the question would rather be: "what is the meaning of my/your life?" That is, every individual would have to find out, or decide, for himself/herself. What can I say, I am a relativist. ^_^

I appreciate the somber tone of this piece. I doubt that one who reads it would not sense the trickle of questions to one's self.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts through beautiful poetry.

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