Transformations

"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of
transformations
is already written.
I am not done with
my changes."Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of
transformations
is already written.
I am not done with
my changes.

This segment of Stanley Kunitz's poem "The Layers" has been on the sidebar of this blog ever since I started it. I know some readers have actually not noticed or read it. I think of it very often. Kunitz wrote the poem at age 78, I believe, and lived to 101 -- twenty plus years of further transformations. And his poetry did change.
Just how do we "live in the layers, not on the litter"? Partly it's that hackneyed idea "don't sweat the small stuff." Live in awareness of all one's experienced and try to have the good sense to know what's important and what's just litter. Don't waste precious time, and all time is precious. Another local poem asked, "what will you do with your one wild and precious life?" [Mary Oliver] I think of that often too. Poetry exists to become part of our thoughts, to give us signposts.

I had reason to look at a picture taken of myself slightly over 70 years ago. I'll add it here if I can figure out how to scan it tomorrow. That child was wincing into the sun and standing rather sturdily, feet firmly planted apart and her little hands in fists. Not comfortable at that moment. She was standing on the porch of the house she was born in, a house with a narrow front porch. The boards were warped and the porch only about three feet deep. A remnant of snow was nearby, I suspect it was spring rather than fall]. I don't believe there are portents in early photographs. Too many factors enter into what comes next, school, all the things to be learned including reading and writing, piano lessons, and the lessons of being with others. All that depends on circumstance. And then comes all the rest of life, changes, one after another. All exciting, although some were scary, confusing, misdirected, ignorant. In seventy years so much, more than many other people experience -- happily, luckily, intentionally, serendipitously, The child is somewhere in the woman but now a tiny bit. The world became so much wider than that narrow, warped porch, the sunshine has been bright, always with a touch of snow nearby. More changes are yet to come.