Tuesday poem #602 : Marilyn Bowering : The Invisible Life of Feeling

 

 

                     for Xan

And there had been the resentment of being strangers in a strange land,
separated from their identities while unable to go back.
                                                                                     Kapka Kassabova

We were drawn towards birth by birds, they say,
the link between us weightless and invisible,
and learned the world of water from above,
its touch on our skulls as rainfall, and
which hunter-haunted marshes to avoid
and where to land and rest.

We learned the meaning of shadows.

Epictetus says do not ask the athlete how much weight they lift,
but look at the shoulders - the hidden strength
in half-light in the morning when they rise to stretch,
pinion muscle supporting arms, body-hair like feathers.

Light fills my daughter’s window - it is summer,
much hallooing from birds when she runs by,
alive together with the earth for this brief time.

I read Seneca at my desk: As things are, isn’t it the height of folly
to learn inessential things when times are so desperately short!
I glance up as she re-enters the house, and hear Seneca
in his printed land, crying: Is this the way to heaven?

A jug on a table is placed to keep our souls, they say:
but one sweep with a hairbrush I found in a dream this morning
returned my hair to dark, and she and I watched storks
fly to their nests on the rooftops of Calle Ciudad de Ronda
at sunset when everyone was young.

 

 

 

Marilyn Bowering [photo credit: Xan Shian] is a novelist, poet and non-fiction writer. Her latest book is More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod (MQUP 2024), a literary investigation, memoir and mediation on poetry. She lives on Vancouver Island with her extended family. marilynbowering.com

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan