Living in Analog

The cold is a mother
as generous as the space
between the stars. I gave her
my discontent & my distance:
all those older & more restless selves
who are still out there, moving away
at the speed of light.
I grinned for Polaroid & single-lens
reflex alike, but inside
I was wincing. Cold.

I learned how to knit
when I was seven: scarves
& sweaters, socks & gloves, maps
& pastures & that long deep lake
I later loved. By then I’d crossed
oceans, no mere mermaid;
you couldn’t touch me without noticing
the scars from ships’ propellers
& orca attacks, the stubborn barnacles.
On land I was a sycamore, rich
in baubles no one wanted,
struggling to peel down
to a warmer skin.

*

See the photo reponse by Rachel Rawlins, “Advert for a summer holiday.”

6 Replies to “Living in Analog”

    1. Read and read last night. It’s even better today! What reach that it can be read as both as personal and planetary, not in a weak correlation, but in a reinforcing dovetail – an utter confusion of you and the world. Love, love, love. Love the breadth of time-space, the luminous particulars, the awesomely sense defying, but righteous, last line.

      Sorry to pant. This just struck me crazy.

  1. Oh my, made me tremble, with what? Hope, wonder, love… Just keep writing it, whatever.

    (They are London planes, I think, not sycamores as we know them.)

    1. Thanks for the kind comment! No, in this poem they are sycamores (mostly because more people have have heard of them, but also because they are more closely associated with water than their very closely related cogeners), just as the narrator of this poem has lived in “analog” rather than “analogue.” It’s part of the trans-Atlantic translation process, in other words, with which our on-going conversation must contend.

Leave a Reply to Dave Bonta Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.