Wordless as the flight of birds

Sorry, friends. I am mute. Dumb. Words stick inside my chest; I can feel their pressure like a stone next to my heart. There is just too much unthinkable stuff to think about these days. This isn't one of my periodic pity-parties. I'm just stating a fact: I've lost my writer's voice.

Here we are in a recession, heading for a depression it seems, and the presidential election process is careering crazily from pony show to horror movie. A winky-winky Barbie doll who says things like "You betcha!", "Joe Six-Pack," and "gosh darn it" for vice president? Gag me with a snowshoe. A $700 billion bailout of Wall Street? How can anyone even count that high? I'm speechless just trying to contemplate it. I'm terrified wondering how such a sum will be paid, and what it means for our children.

I really do have some other things to share with my blog-reading friends. Some continuing bad news (Michael is still unemployed, 1.5 years now); some new bad news – I broke my beloved Canon G5 camera and have not gotten a replacement yet; some good news – Kevin is doing well in school and seems like a different person since his ADD diagnosis and starting on a med to help him focus.

During the past month I've done some fun things and reached a new level of victory over my old driving phobia. My pulse is racing from the pace of my job. I'll get through it. Fall is always a crazy-beautiful season for me.

Tonight, the concept "mute" immediately evoked the first lines of a favorite poem I still remember from decades ago. Since I'm not doing so well speaking for myself, I'll let the poet take over. Tonight, I will just be.

Ars Poetica

by Archibald Macleish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown --

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.


A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind --

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.


A poem should be equal to
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea --

A poem should not mean
But be.