By Joy Ladin
Clearwater Beach
Someone spilled a drop of me
and now I'm everywhere,
immersing pebbles on the shore,
scaring nesting plovers,
boring their endangered chicks
with unasked-for confessions
that I was young once too,
that I can't fly either,
that I startle myself
when I glimpse my face in the mirror.
I'm so sick of being sick,
so over being over,
so small – no bigger than the universe
a nano-second after the cosmic egg
Big-Bang-ed into n-dimensions,
where n is a number that preceded mathematics
and dimensions are strings
and Big Bang is a thing
I can say but cannot imagine.
I stare into the depths of time
but the depths don't stare back.
I was made in the image of God,
the world was put in my hands.
Now, every breath I take
marks another extinction.
Our universe may be past its prime,
but there's still light enough to see
nebulae nursing brand-new stars
formed, like us,
out of dust and ashes.
Out of billions of years,
I still have a few
to do what I was made to.
So here I am, proselytizing plovers,
another endangered creature
who lives and dies, poops and pipes,
soars and decomposes.
A Modest Proposal
Let's not kill or die today.
Let's make angels out of yarn, men of snow, mashed potato animals
that smile as we spoon
their eyes of melted butter.
Instead of killing ourselves or one another,
let's neatly stack anxiety's sweaters
and scratch our itchy trigger fingers
by whittling turtles for our mothers,
or pretending to understand Heidegger,
or imagining the sexual embrace
through which time and space
first conceived of matter.
If we still aren't over killing and dying,
we can search the stacks for library books
that haven't circulated in generations
and savor the mold
that spores their spines
the way wine snobs savor the nose
of vintage wines bottled
between wars to end all wars.
Look, we've played all day
and haven't spilled a drop of blood
apart from the occasional paper cut.
In an hour or two, when it's very dark,
let's make up stories out of stars,
and fill them with all the killing and dying
we didn't do today, except in our imaginations.
Let's pull our comforters over our heads
and sing ourselves to sleep
like good little civilizations.
Time Passes
Time too is afraid of passing.
Time sweats in the middle of the night
When all the other dimensions are sleeping.
Time's lost every picture of itself as a child.
Old, leathery and slow,
Time can't sneak up on anyone anymore.
Can't hide in the grass, can't run, can't catch.
Can't figure out how not to trample
What it means to bless.
The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
As human-created terrors and apocalypses multiply, it becomes harder and harder to exercise our imagination to envision other futures, other ways of life, to recognize the wonders and blessings of the present, and to embrace our connections to what is beyond the human. That's why arts, culture, and the creative process seem more important than ever now: to awake us, remind us, shock us, give shape and expression to fear and grief, sing us into awareness and celebration. I'm delighted that you have created this space to highlight this work, inspire more, and help us respond to one another's efforts.
