Night Weather – Fall, Week 13: Hope in the Season of Destruction

​Cynthia Reeves, “Man Can Be His Own Destruction,” 1950s. The painting has been damaged but is still powerful.

My father killed himself forty-seven years ago on Monday, 12 December 1977. This week is the 13th and final week of fall. 

A Good Death
Fall 1977

I take my yellow pad and felt pen.
They’ve told me not to come to work again.
Your nerves are shot, they say. Get some help.
But they’re afraid I’ll talk. And I’m afraid,

sure they’ve bugged the house. Again
the do-re-mi in my head, as I slide
out of my car, wondering how I got here,
on the ridge I’m walking up, thinking

of the old man who could stand at the top
and see nothing he didn’t own but sky. Too tight
to spend his cash on fire, Jones wore his coat
indoors all winter and ate his supper cold.

I sit on a root and write, conjuring
the old man in his 80’s scything grass
with an easy, fluid motion, laying it down
in swatches as neat as a schoolmarm’s letters;

the muscles rippling across his back
as he swung the blade; the rhythm he settled into,
paying out no more effort than needed
to finish by dark. I write, I wish I’d learned

to die like Jones at harvest, a well-worn
tool in hand, a ripe field beckoning.
Now I’m back in the car, the Fury
starting, the world streaming by like water,

the road beneath my tires turning liquid.
Now I swallow the pills as if I were a child
and they were candy corn—a handful—two handfuls
like shaped notes in the mouth, the darkness

singing fa-sol-la, ‘tis eventide,
the stupor will abide with me,
and I know how the dead wake, eating
grains of dirt to get back to the light. 
      Skating Rough Ground, 2022; Bay Leaves, Spring 2012
 
******

Closing the Account
December 1977
 
The solstice nears. Slush of old snow funds
the Yadkin with dirty commerce. Clay banks
dictate their depositions to the river. 
The river is not satisfied. I write

over each doorway in the house
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The flamboyance
is for myself, to show God I really
suffer. What is it I’ve forgotten? 

I begin the last words on my pad: 
I rise with dawn and feel like hell. 
Voices in my head, voices among
the waking birds, ‘Come and see,

a bushel of barley for a penny.’
They led me like a child through court
to testify against my kind, my friends
from childhood. I did it for my children,

to look them in the eye. As my sole
bargaining chip with God. I’ve blazed all
the lintels with black magic marker,
but the angel will not pass over. 

Pill bottles by the bed, in the library
a rack of guns. But this is how it ought
to end: like cut grass, blanched. Like morning glory
shriveling to a pin. What will the milk cow do?

Go on chewing what she has chewed before,
her milk vein swelling to feed her bag. 
Cast into the fire, I will smoke like fat. 
The world we love will go on being the world. 
      Skating Rough Ground, 2022; Bay Leaves, Fall 2011

*****

Katie Nordt LaRosa, 2010

Ripeness Is All

Weighting the low branches, vermilion
splotched with apple green, it hangs
in easy reach—not quite ready
to pick, but turn your eye away one
moment, it will bruise with neglect.

The exact moment never comes
when it falls easily to hand.
By day it holds the stem like
a hooked redeye, then over night
spikes itself on the stubble.

When is my time, you wonder,
when will I, trembling with plenty
let go into the ripe void?
When will I steer
drunkenly into the blade?
     Night Weather, 2010; Visions International, 2005


*****

hawk in the dripping tree
can soar and dive and kill
and sit still in the rain

Miguel de Cervantes:
     Let me tell you, answered Don Quixote, that there is no remembrance that time does not efface, nor pain that death does not end.
    But what greater misfortune can there be, replied Sancho Panza, than one that waits for time to efface it and death to end it?

Vaclav Havel:
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world . . . Either we have hope or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.
     Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons . . .
     Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is.
     Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. (quoted in comment by Tatiana to blog post, "On Hope," by J. Nelson-Seawright)

The prophet Mormon (Moroni 7):
41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.
42 Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope.
43 And again, behold I say unto you that he cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be meek, and lowly of heart.

Posted 15 December 2024