Timely Poem by my friend Arlene Corwin

The times are fraught; too much of my reading and listening time -- indeed too much of my brain time -- is spent with news about the impeachement proceedings in Washington. And whenever I turn pages in the NYTimes or read The New Yorker or other magazines I discover other ways in which the world is badly awry. I believe there were four shootings in the past ten days and that's only in America.

Several years ago I began a correspondence with Arlene Corwin, poet-proflict with 13 books in print and her own very specific style which I think springs in large part from the fact that she has been a professional jazz pianist (and sometimes singer) since the age of 16. And she is now a wee bit older than I am, has been living in Sweden for quite some time and sends me her new poems, often hot off the laptop several times a week. She's just had a bad couple of months when her body seemed to announce it was giving up, but Arlene has also been a practitioner and teacher of yoga for most of her life and her mind/body said NO,  IT'S NOT TIME TO GO. She is recouperating and back to writing poems, which have mostly take a somewhat move serious look at the world and life in general. I am especially in agreement with today's poem and have warned her I will quote it here. She doesn't mind at all.

   Mysteries That Never Cease

There are mysteries that never cease,

Will always be:

Because of, not in spite of.

Look at progress:

Despite progress, we are more at risk than ever.

I fear, not ‘in spite of’, but ‘because of’, progress never

What it seems,

All the reams of information,

New advances, dancing in our eyes and ears

Dependent on who sees or hears,

Every positive a dormant negative

Dependent on whose hands it’s in.

Then the secrets of infinity:

What, where, how, why, when; 

A mystery most definitely.

And music, art 

The part that improvises and creates

Out of a place inscrutable,

Wondrous, wonderful.

To never understand?

Dependent on whose hand it’s in, 

Whose talent, aptitude, inborn mind

Is interested at all to find

The answers.

Mysteries That Never Cease 11.21.2019

Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin