Saturday, August 4, 2012

The Weight

by Jefferson Hansen


                                  for Jon

urban lake to our right
       asphalt path
   bikers and walkers going past
we talk of our children
    glands, lesions, injections
             healthcare gone amok
I have known your wise
         eyes for 17 years
but sometimes nothing is enough
       and this is all a joke
   in a sense but
 more serious also
          than cancer itself
the heart is a muscle
   but metaphorically it is not even inside
          us
      scattered all over
    the world
we go out to it always
         in our desire and compassion
   and it breaks everyday
      if we care enough
the pleasure in doing harm
  is boundless
         the pleasure of caring takes
     work and focus
this world is too much,
      sometimes: you talk
   of a book that says
          the so-called bipolar
       make the best leaders
     at times of crisis because
they are realistic, creative,
    empathetic, and resilient
         Abraham Lincoln is exemplary
maybe “normality” is craziness
      a way of lying and assuming into being
   a world that doesn’t
    exist — harm can only
          result
traffic on road ringing lake
    overcomes the singing birds
            a slow runner waddles by
        wishing to lose weight?
    good luck to him
and I complain about the heat in my apartment
         you talk of humidity
      an oldest child going
    to college in a month:
old age doesn’t sneak up
        it suddenly appears
               and constricts our heart
          muscle and metaphor
this day isn’t this day
     it is our wishes and projections
       our whole last week heaped
   and what we hope
           heaped onto that
this day sits well outside
   our concerns
         some sort of moving
      in the air some sort
   of lapping at the edge of the lake
we will die not knowing where we lived
  having cared too, too much

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