Last year at this time, I was pleased to receive an email with “Congratulations” in the Subject line. I’d been chosen as one of the 30 poets for the Common Language Project. Yesterday, I received another email with the name of the project as the subject and the message “We know that a rejection email can be disappointing…” This link contains the rules, the 30 required words, and the names of the winners—whose names are, in fact, quite interesting.
The truth is that I thought my poem for 2024 was much better. I can barely read it even now without a catch in my voice. Last year, not so much. It is the same this year. I think it’s better than last year. Everything is subjective. That’s not entirely true, of course, but in winner selection, I’m comfortable with the idea.
The premise of the poem on time is that not only does it not exist; it will also end. That’s just physics, as well as my belief system. The “spots of time” with the two little girls’ dresses is clear in my mind—the place, the time of day, the feelings. A package arrived at my grandmother’s house from a family friend and former employee who cooked and cared for her children (I’m going to leave that for effect to see if anyone catches it.) This woman and her sisters quilted and canned vegetables and continued to cook gloriously. These dresses were blue and pink gingham. Whichever one was to be mine was not the one I wanted. That I was three years older than my sister and therefore bigger did not matter to my young brat brain. I have repented.
Below are my prize-losing poems. I’ll collect them elsewhere.
A Brief Future of Time
In our minds, we were all there at the crack of it—
Big Bang! a rush of time and matter and light woven, breaking
A threshold of Nothing and by extension: Us, drawn, dragging
Into not enough of it, wasted, “Time’s up—put your pencils down.”
The ache of losing it, the tarnish of bright futures as they veer
Into catastrophes of skies gone grey then black then…
An interruption from soil left fallow that will fold again into another
Nothing—something—nothing—over and over and over?
A dial that is cracked—repaired—cracked—again and again?
The rhythm of a meter to quicken—faster—faster—ending—repeating?
Or perhaps not. No branches yield multiverses, no fishing pole
With a line dropped, a long lengthening line bobbing into eternity
Down and down and down eternally.
Instead, time may be, literally, nothing. Capital N Nothing,
Arranged for us to enter and exit, stories to begin and end
With us trapped—clocked—snapped in its (our) middles.
Einstein’s stubborn illusions made heavy: all friction marks gone.
Or Wordsworth’s spot of time binding generations:
Remember those dresses that came in the mail, wrapped in brown paper?
Pink, blue ginghams with flowers chicken-scratched Xs round the hems?
And I wanted the blue, so did you, and we argued? I’m sorry, now.
Now, I’d keenly rejoice if a dress came, gifted, to and from, with love.
Remember?
Eternity is a place to stay, to harbor, to be and be and
Stay/on/a/static/axis and be forever a never-setting sun but
Home
Closing the chapter, done and over
At Home. At Long Last, Home.
“Eve” deleted and unpublished so eligible for submission to Plough contest.
