Two Views from Ponderosas

“There is a freedom in having a regular place to return to—it takes away the need to think about it and allows a person to rest”

-1-

The Consolation 

The figure here called consolation is real,

Is actual, coincidental, standing sandstone, 

Half-arch, half-hoodoo, tilted, stooped 

In an outline against the sky, suggesting,

At least to the human engaged in this 

Composition, an older, slump-shouldered 

Person who is reaching out an arm to rest

A huge stone hand, bracing an eroding cliff,

Face to face, as if in consolation. That’s it.

Whenever I could not move, we were free.

When nurses politely, kindly, locked me

In a room without a window, we were free.

When the numbers all were negative,

And the banks, to survive as thriving banks,

Had to come for anything positive from me,

We were free. When I, on my gurney, finally

Finished being wheeled a long-hall journey 

Into surgery, after waiting a week, we were

Free. When the seatbelt was buckled more

Tightly across our waists to secure us

And there was nothing to do but to sit

And watch the uncontrollable scenery scroll

Past us, we were free. Our one consolation,

One inexplicable sensation: now, we’re free.

If your shame among the humans, who

Have built lives and civilizations, empires,

An entire species, entire global ecosystem, 

Of shame, becomes sufficiently intense,

You will, if you do not die from shame, snap

Back in your own breathing and feel free.

Maybe that consolation comes from loving

But ignoring human beings being human 

Among other things worth being, worth 

Loving and ignoring, just as fear of other

Humans being human means fearing other

Humans, the fear that being human brings.

Here I sense that hoodoo bending in me,

Slumping, weathered, stooped with thinking

These things, these always wearing, human

Being things. How human of me, imagining 

I am a crumbling rockface being comforted,

And an accidental buttress, tilted, cracked, 

Barely standing but, as yet, still capable

Of reaching out an arm, a weathered hand

To rest upon the cliff that I am comforting.

It is possible. It may be necessary, to be

Incapable of moving and to remain subject 

To being moved, like stone, but unlike stone

To know it, to be human and to yet feel free.

-2-

A Contentment 

By the wayside, smaller winds were tuning

Dry grasses and trees as reeds and woodwinds.

Comfortably seated in shade-mixed sun,

Free for the moment from bodily pain,

From hunger, thirst, or pressing human claims,

I basked in the gold glow that warmed my ribs

Through my clean, soft shirt and was contented. 

“What does contentment mean when life is full

Of the unexpected and unwanted?”

Asked Yiyun Li, and not rhetorically,

At least not entirely. Like well-being

And satisfaction, contentment can seem

Smug and secondary, a lowly thing.

Why? Since, during whatever interval

It lasts, we experience no striving,

And even the non-selves of the Buddhists,

The hermetic wanderings of Taoists,

Come laced with the arsenic of striving

In assumptions whatever we’re doing

Or not doing as we ought is to blame,

Is the reason for all our suffering.

Contentment, whatever it means, must lack

A grippable edge for aspiration.

Worse still, contentment is temporary,

On par with mere pleasure, therefore low-born

In the human happiness hierarchy.

Aspiration aspires eternally

And can’t relax until eternity.

Aspiration reeks of nobility,

Saintliness, wisdom, and humility.

Contentment reeks of contentment only,

And is physical, internal to one,

A glossy, well-fed cat curled in the sun. 

What can it mean, this temporary thing,

Knowing however often it returns,

The unwanted will return as often,

Unexpectedly, to take It away?

It means nothing, nothing but that it is

Possible to feel, despite everything,

Contentment and, then, contentment again.