Shades of Obliteration

Poem, Warblings, Prompt

Shades of Obliteration

I went outside to watch the rain
turn the leaves to dripping paint—
scarlet, apricot, canary
warbling to the ground.

I held an umbrella in my hand,
forgot to open it.
My true blue jeans darkened indigo,
legs skated downslope
until slope let go and simply
dropped.

A sandstone lip jutted into void,
tasted fog, rising
ethereal from the holler—
ghost story, cinema screen, ganymede
a river flowing up.

How do I not jump?
my words flowing out.
I want to dive,
swim, be swallowed,
not root on the sidelines
and the edges of cliffs.

Below me, the ground keeps
fogging the mirror, 
breathing with its mouth wide.
It gives no answer,
just passes sky
back to itself 

like falling comes
with a return address,
like falling is
the return address. 

Warblings

I like how the word “warblings” sounds a bit like “ramblings” and thus conjures variation, exploration, and detours from a straight path, while at the same time suggesting melody, beauty, enjoyment, and perhaps even exuberance. That is the manner in which I hope to warble at you, my dears. (Though in the poem above, I imagined “warbling” as a beautiful falling toward the ground, like a downward trilling of musical notes.)

Then again, “warblings” also sounds like “wobblings,” and I confess that I am feeling a little wobbly at the moment. One of my sons developed abdominal pain a couple of days ago. By dinner time, we were in urgent care, by bedtime we were in the ER, and at 3:00 AM we finally made it into a hospital room. He had his appendix removed yesterday—a routine surgery, a small surgery with a low incidence of complications and a relatively easy recovery. And yet, no surgery feels routine or small to a 14-year-old kid—or to his mother, doing her best to exude calm and compassion and reassurance when really, she wants to cry . . . or sleep.

We are home now, and my son is on the couch, surrounded by snacks and drinks and our golden doodle. I’m feeling grateful that things turned out well, grateful that these small problems are our big problems, but also . . . wobbly. Tired. Unfocused. Not particularly motivated to accomplish anything at all.

Maybe you can relate? Maybe something personal or something political or the juxtaposition of the two has you wobbling? Maybe you’re wobbling but don’t know why?

A natural instinct in such moments is to grab something and hold on tight—to make a handrail of your to-do list or a lifeline out of a particular relationship, role, identity, or ideology. I say do what you have to do to survive. But also . . . what if our wobbly moments are openings? What if we respond to them by letting life shake us, letting Life shake our little life, until a wall cracks open, reveals a door?

I’ve probably quoted these lines from Rilke to you a half dozen times, but that’s no surprise, since I repeat them to myself over and over: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.” The letting is the magic wand. Everything will happen to you and to me and to the people we love; that part is inescapable. The freedom, the choice, the shaping of our lives is in the response, the way we position ourselves relative to reality. Do we clench? Do we slump? Do we squeeze our eyes shut or shove our fingers in our ears or point a finger or make a fist? Do we run? Do we fight?

Probably, there are times and places for every one of these responses, but how often do we let? How often do we relax into the difficult or unexpected thing? How often do we let the most alive, awake part of us be our curiosity, our attentiveness, our deep noticing?

Rilke, again, because (again) I quote this to myself all the time, including at 4:00 AM in hospital rooms:

Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?

What is this moment, this one now, like for you?

To me, this question feels like a door. It feels like windows suddenly open wide, like air rushing in. And that acute aliveness . . . I want that even more than I want ease, more than I want happiness or “success.” I want to dive, swim, be swallowed, not root on the sidelines and the edges of cliffs.

Oh my, I have warbled far from any mapped-out path. Which is probably because I didn’t really have a mapped-out path when I started writing . . . just a desire and intention to be in conversation with this moment and to let that conversation live onto the page, where you can join it, too.

If you feel a pull to share something, I hope you will. What has you wobbling right now? What’s helping you to soften, relax, let? Or is there some other posture that feels truer to your values and way of being?

And finally, if you’d like a prompt to play with today, then read on. As much as I might ramble and roam, you can count on me for this tiny seed of a thing . . .

The Prompt

Like so many of my poems, “Shades of Obliteration” was inspired by a moment of shattering awe at the beauty of nature. I was feeling kind of in my head, thinking that maybe I should be home doing something “productive,” not indulging in still more time in the woods. I thought maybe I was being selfish, granting myself too much. But then I traipsed down this wooded trail and quickly forgot that I have a self. (Or remembered that I don’t?)

When I reached that sandstone lip and saw everything below me consumed in a rising, churning river of fog and everything behind me dripping and vibrant as wet paint, I literally said the words aloud: “How do I not jump?” By which I think I meant, “How can I possibly remain an individual, a part, a piece? How can I possibly tend to my little life when the whole that contains us is so alive, so beautiful, so impossibly vast?”

That feeling is, for me, the heart of the poem. But when it occurred to me (the next morning) to compare the rain-soaked autumn leaves to dripping paint, a different kind of inspiration entered. I got excited about the notion of using paint names to describe the colors, so I started googling names for red paint and orange and yellow and later gray (ghost story, cinema screen, ganymede). It was both challenging and really fun to let these two sources of inspiration—one spiritual, the other idiosyncratic but very concrete—be in conversation with one another as I wrote this poem.

So, play with me friends . . . make a trip to your store and pour over the names of paints. Or search up paint names online. Make a list of any and all names that delight you, surprise you, provoke you, or cause you to scratch your head. Is there a particular family of colors that you feel pulled to at the moment? Or is there one that repels you? These might both be fruitful places to focus your attention.

The goal isn’t necessarily to write a poem about color or about paint—though it’s fine if you do. But I wonder if you can sense some other poem that wants to be written? Some half-born or barely conceived thing, waiting for expression? A draft that’s been sitting, stuck and stagnant? An experience/memory/story you’ve been meaning to process? A feeling you’ve been needing to wrap in words? What would it be like to invite this as-yet-not-fully-expressed-or-explored thing to sit down and have a conversation with . . . paint names? I admit this sounds weird . . . which is why I hope you'll try it! I’d be so delighted to read whatever you come up with.

You can also support my work—and get something lovely to hold in your hands—by buying my book!