MIND OF A POET
Becky Gibson’s work has appeared recently in Cold Mountain Review, Pinyon, and Crosswinds. Her collections of poetry include Aphrodite’s Daughter (X.J. Kennedy Prize, Texas Review Press, 2007); Need-Fire (BHP Poetry Series winner, Bright Hill Press, 2007); Heading Home (Lena Shull Book Contest winner, Main Street Rag, 2014); and Indelible (Dogfish Head Poetry Prize, The Broadkill River Press, 2018).
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Truth Is, Mr. Merwin
with apologies* I think of your mole, Mr. Merwin, with its blind velvet fingers and wise nails, as I set a trap for the evening’s kill, not mole but mouse, who, unseen and nightly visits our kitchen, plunders bread on the counter, gnawing through plastic, leaving his tiny dark gifts-- tokens, perhaps, of appreciation. I admit that his fur has a certain beauty—its fineness and soft gray color. You’re welcome to pity the poor creature, though I imagine it rather easy, as it’s not your bread he got into. No Buddhist am I, Mr. Merwin, though I freely ransack the teachings, so, with little emotion, I scoop up the mouse and his coffin, slip them into a Baggie, dump it all in the garbage, not reverently, the way you buried your fox or built your cat a pyre. Truth is, Mr. Merwin, my mouse I find alien, the gulf between us impassable, the naked whip of a tail proof of our naked difference. A mouse worshiped in India takes his chances in my kitchen. I want him gone along with his brothers and cousins infiltrating my larder like small-time, small-town Mafiosi. W. S. Merwin, “The Mole,” The Shadow of Sirius (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). |
Truth is, this poem seemed to draft itself. At the time, I was a member of a poetry class where we read a single poet (in this case, W. S. Merwin), as well as offered a poem of our own for the group to critique. I had hesitated over Merwin for years, but I came to admire the range and depth of his work. Enter Mouse, and a real incident in my kitchen. It fit Merwin’s poem “The Mole” almost too neatly. I didn’t think much about what I’d write before starting out. I began with phrases from Merwin—an easy launch. It was then just a matter of letting the contrasts play out between Merwin’s reverent attitude toward his dead mole and my less than reverent one for my mouse. The words I choose tell the story. For Merwin’s “velvet fingers” and “wise nails,” I have “plunders,” “gnawing,” “Baggie,” “dump,” “garbage,” “infiltrating,” and the final insult, “Mafiosi.” With that word came the mock heroic, upping the ante of the ridiculous, which had been building, line by line. The word surprised me (where did it come from?) and clinched the poem. Maybe the “truth” is more complicated than either reverence or its opposite would indicate. On another day, in a different mood, I may have written about the godlike nature of Mouse, which may also be the truth.
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