Commentary
Here’s how I posted this on Facebook:
WITH SINCERE APOLOGIES TO ALL
This opaque poem is an attempt to capture how many of us—maybe all of us—think of the fleeting now as all that matters.
In my crawl through John, I’m repeatedly impressed that Jesus is more interested in his listeners’ eternal life than they are.
The preacher said that God sets eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). More often than not, we chase it out.
PERHAPS APOLOGIES WERE NOT REQUIRED
I’ll probably never understand how others respond to poetry. There are poems I think are really good, but I know in advance that nobody else will respond to them–and I don’t blame them! I also publish poems that I’m not especially proud of, and they get a lot of positive response. I couldn’t tell with this poem. It seemed rather opaque (thus the apology). But I was honoring my intuition about repetition and line breaks. Here’s an example of the latter: “By drop of rain” was originally a continuation of the preceding line. So it was “We stare, transfixed by drop of rain.” Then, I thought, “Creating a new line elevates what’s on that line.” And I wanted to elevate the disconnect between the transience of the thing–“drop of rain” and “momentarily” on the one hand–and our response to it–“celebrate” and “Momentous” on the other hand. If my intuition about line breaks is right, then others WILL respond positively, whether or not they stop to identify what’s happening.
