BY JAN HAAG
THE 2008 POEMS
EXORCISM -- THE PROSAICS
PAPAYA
#67
02-13-08
Well, it: Langer’s, After-Dinner Gardening Book, tells
you everything about a papaya except whether or
not it needs a mate to fruit. That
seems to be the way with books. As
if they wanted to keep back a market
for the next one. So Hooray for the
NET! If you can’t find it on one
page you can find it on another. Or
if it’s not there yet among the billion
sites, you can post a website yourself or
put it in Wikipedia. Oh, it is so
refreshing to get rid of the secrets of
the human race. This morning, I have an
urge to step out among the monumental stones:
Stonehenge,
the Brittany coast menhirs, Carnac,
the
aisle
at Avebury, the carved, stone lidded table tombs
at Painswick where I ate chocolate frosted Digestive
Biscuits and lemon cookies in the early glowing
dawn of the English countryside. I have touched
these stones, I have seen them. I have
even lain in a stone coffin at
Conques
--
much to the shock of my friend, who
is not as amused by death as I
am. But, really, I want to tell her,
it is the only enduring thing. And even
then, the pyramids crumble, centimeter by centimeter through
the Egyptian aeons. I have a longing for
old tastes. The crisp crumbing of yeast muffins
with raisins, and coffee. I think of sitting
with Eva on the terrace in that other
stone town, it was red -- almost all red
stone. Breakfasting on a white damask table cloth,
being so civilized -- as one can be with
Eva, who doesn’t find death amusing. But, I
cry, so many have come and gone -- filling
up the earth until the enlightened ones invented
the pyre, the bird picking disposal, the overboards
at sea, slowly developing the ability to leave
the mountaineers frozen on their highest mountains. Next,
we’ll learn to leave body parts in the
ocean after the airplane crashes. Goodness me! What’s
a body? At 75 one is well versed
in what a burden it is, its urgencies,
its appetites, still seldom willing to participate in
the slower processes, the accretions, the barnacles, swimming
about, wanting to adhere, and the mind, still
wanting to pop high out of the surface
of the sea after a good long dive.
The only thing fascinating left on earth is
the process, the close watching, day by day,
of the body wanting the spirit’s territory and
vice versa. The nightmarish thoughts: “What if I
can’t walk in the morning?” But morning comes
and up you get, not remembering it was
going to be a trouble. But problems do
come, sit on you, like the menhirs, the
blue stones and the saracens at Stonehenge, pressing
you down to the earth -- where you belong. Don’t
roll up the sod! -- you’ll find my bones --
along with my great grandmother’s tears under her
sod house. And to, at last,
come
to
the conclusion if the only thing you’re interested
in is reading, lectures and human doom, what
else is there to do, but laugh about
it -- and write a poem -- about papayas -- who
may or not need a mate to propagate.
Copyright © 2008 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
BY JAN HAAG