The Thing Itself

The Thing Itself

For dee

“Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.”

Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being

I

When you have learned to choose

the flattest stones and can skip them

four times into the oncoming waves.

When you fling the duckling your pup has killed

back into the fog-bound lake with a prayer

to a missing belief.  When you read, and looking up

see your book cast upon a summer afternoon

as if its pages have come unbound and are spread

upon the dark clematis purple of a blooming

world.   When you find yourself

as skillful with a shovel and a word as you are

with a saucepan and song. When you walk

down an unlit hallway in the invisible taupe shadows

of November afternoons to look for windows.

When you look down the golden throat of a white lily                    

as it breathes in light, and breathes summer

onto your skin, and you want to plant your feet

in the memory loam of this moment as deeply

as a tree in time and weather.

You want someone to take your portrait.

II

Perhaps as you slide, late,

harassed, and sweaty,

into the chair at the coffee shop across

from your stiffly smiling friend,

you are sitting for your portrait.

No, not some instagram snapshot with its moody look

of the Brownie square, not some iClick,

your friend is now uploading to FB with a cheeky

insult while you order your coffee.

But a portrait by Vermeer who conceives

the old golden afternoon light merely

to embody a reason for you

to put down your book or simply

think about turning your head

to face her.  A portrait of your face and voice

comprehending hers, a portrait of you listening

for that plod of grief in her voice you heard last week, 

that shadow that does not disappear at noon

but radiates from her hands like a bracelet

or a blessing.

Portraits happen daily. 

When you go missing, driving through a March

that refuses to be spring or tipping your change

into the glass jar at the foot

of the wooden stairs,  Manet knows the vista

of boredom that sounds like nickels hitting glass

When you are arguing with your inner interlocutor

who won’t let go of the injustice crumpled in his hands

like the receipt he hurries to take as he leaves

the grocery store, Rembrandt sees the light the philosopher

reads by, as well as the improbable staircase

turned inside out that

winds through half your life.

III

Just so these people gathered on Boston Common to sit

for Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island

of La Grande Jatte” one hundred twenty years too late,

knowing the attention to a moment

he saw in those bodies is always there.

In the lovers, he petting the dog, wondering

how the dog keeps its composure or finds

excitement in the daily round,

she staring into the blinding sunlight of an argument.

But always, there is the girl just turning

toward all the visible and invisible

questions, to stare them down before

she puts them in her damp pocket.

This is the first poem in a section called "Questions in Our Pockets."  Unlike most of the other photographs, these have people in them.  I suppose they're the poet's and photographer's version of people-watching.  

The photograph above is "Saturday Afternoon on the Boston Common" by Veronica Geminder.  Her work can be found here.