Claudia KeelanInstead of Reading Marcus Aurelius
Not the night poem Not that one It was morning and the hummingbird moths Were hunting in the bottlebrush Not silence either nor absence But the slow breathing of father and son The books of others Tho not Hannah Arendt The name she woke thinking Saying aloud in the dark "I need to read Hannah Arendt." All this before leaving And more Pill bottles with her name on them Little bags of jewelry, of food, A pen safe in a loop The still air And hummingbird moths flying through it Hunting, he said, in the dawn An enormous cup of coffee And the slight unease inside her mouth --Sharing their material? Her intentions appreciated by strangers The morning's rose gratitude Lodged there, and rising, in her breath Cerebral cortex there too Which part of it loved music more than sight? The hummingbird moths yes But hardly their bodies (can't see them) Rather the vibration of their--of what must be their wings? The darting between the flame red brushes And what makes people laugh when they're not happy? Registering that, feeling a crease on her brow, Those sounds opposing each other --Flying moth --Laughing lady traveler The bronze face of the dead man in her lap Who believed opinion was everything and was ready to "accept without resentment whatever may befall." Falling children. 4 out of 5 dead, except the "worthless Commodus who lived to succeed his father." Hmm. What would Hannah Arendt say She wanted to know The beauty of human enterprise, its folly, from above Greening a desert The indifference then and the glory Of the red rocks The human lines of a freeway The wind trace on the small mountains Nothing could live there No, this a thought limited by a humanist idea of life All the things she couldn't see Living there below Plants never yet classified Scorpions and floating organisms And Oh! A river! The Colorado! Not reaching its original destination At last hearing, miles short of it And its water "misting" the tourists at the casinos O beautiful O spacious Your grainy grains of sand Enjoying her belly for some reason Enjoying the blue ink on the page It's still there anyway, the Colorado Long and skinny and in a canyon Not the night poem The day poem of travel And people pointing Thoughtfully chewing her glasses' stems Not thought not fully Her teeth lightly on the plastic How relevant! How marvelous and relevant! Absolutely seriously She is in love with all the wonderful things Teeth for example and biting The floss sliding between the cracks Smiles and snarls As on a Ferris wheel The English professor had said he didn't like those formless things Speaking of Allen Ginsberg's poetry And "Howl" the poem she was ready to teach again All buttoned up with Jane Austen under his arm And though it is true that candor abolishes paranoia She did not say "go to hell fathead" --Allen, dear man, wouldn't have wanted it-- But "goodbye" there by the stairs Some things are desperate to be eaten All the fine cereals in their boxes The egg dishes she either chooses or does not She's sleeping The world below is full of rectangles Farms are spreading across America Trees come back and buildings Nothing whispers in her ear Sounds come in and out and in She's awake for the second time today Praise the open eye the awkward hands The belly digesting the cereal Praise the seat where she sits Fly, Fly--Be a moth in your life Be a quick movement among flowers Bloom
Claudia Keelan is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently of UTOPIC, which won the 2000 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books. She is just completing a new manuscript, The Devotion Field, and currently teaches in the MFA/PhD Creative Writing Program at the University of Nevada--Las Vegas.
