At Rest

Ecclesiastes

 

Gaudy Fall adds up to the same

An inauspicious ending as the leaves land

Flat on their backsides

Curling at the edges like burning paper.

 

Cost comes from desire and comes to its own end at

The table where we are satisfied and no more

The time when we leave behind our winks for widows

And all the extra becomes lean

As seasons fade and flourish.

 

Empty lakes drain just the same

A seepage from mud

Accumulated like hoarded cardboard in the basement.

Manners prevent the unloading of truth

And all that stands between us and death

Are levies beholden to junk bonds

And patched by someone’s chewing gum.

 

Within the sanctuary of the heart all impermanence lies

And with the closing of the eyelids comes

The realization that however beautiful

The colors come out the same shade

The silt rests at the bottom

And that rhymes with forever.

Reviews

[Ed Hart]

you write a damn fine poem...

[R J Askew]

I am not familiar with Ecclesiastes alas, so I can't follow the religious thread. But I can follow the feeling of despair at the way life goes for us, literally. I can see the leaves falling as you describe, but you twist more from the image with the burning. This made me think of human cremation, which awaits most of us now, esp in the UK where burial is less common now. I think the third verse is the best. It is as if the mood has you in its grip there. I read 'empty lake' to be an ordinary man, one not full of hyperbolous self-importance, success, or worldly wealth of some kind. 'Accumulated cardboard in the basement' I read in a personal way like this...'I don't have anything worthy of putting on the great shelves of the world's library, but I have been a diligent man and done my bit on the cardbord front'. Carboard has little worth reading on it. A used cardboard box is also empty, as a life is emptied in the living and must be packed down ready for re-cycling. It is logical and tidy to pack the box down. Maybe we treat our lives in the same way. Is the last third of life a tidying up, a packing down. I don't know. 'The silt rests at the bottom' is another line I like. It seems to say that all the excitements and trials of life end rotting down to something that a river will wash away. Is time the river, I wonder? But silt is just as much a part of the universe as we are and can nourish new life. So is anything really ever lost? Our atoms are still part of the universe. And even silt is whizzing round the sun at speed. I may not have understood all the poem, but I got enough from it to feel well nourished by it.