passenger seat poetry

Today is my dad's birthday. He's fifty-four, I think, and across the country from me. I sent him a book of W.S. Merwin poems, in part because Merwin is one of my favorites. (I keep a classic of his--River of Bees--taped to the inside of my kitchen cabinets.) And in part because my father is a poet, himself. Like me, he keeps scraps of verses litered around all the spaces he occupies--his truck, his office, and the small laundry room my mother lets him fill with gym bags, golf clubs, and other messy male things. He writes all the time, mostly, it seems, to clear the ideas out of his mind and deposit them onto any waiting bit of paper. If you happen to share a long car trip with my dad, the luxury of the passengar seat comes with the obligation to scribe.

I think my dad and I are a lot alike in the ways we are inspired. It takes motion. You can see it when either of us catch an idea. We get the gleaming eyes of someone lassoing a wild pony--toss the rope quick and hang on. We've both loved travel since we were old enough to get away, I think because of the promise of inspiration out there on the breeze. It hits me when I'm flying, or jogging, or riding my bike to the bar.

For some reason, it makes me think of the physics classes from high school I can barely rememeber and the lowercase 'd' with the line over top--displacement, movement, change. It was the active part of the equation and an indicator that something new was emerging.

Today's my dad's birthday and I'm on a trip. It feels appropriate and I feel great here on my own, appreciating my displacement and the movement ahead. I look outside and see Colorado's wide sky and smell adventure in my four days away. It almost makes me want to write a poem. Because after all those times scribing in the passenger's seat, I've definitely learned one important lesson from my dad--the real inspiration comes when you're drivin'.

astro-nuts

An astronaut has been charged with attempted murder. She was stuck in a love triangle and trying to kidnap and kill her way out the news alledges. My coworker just called me over to her computer to see the photos of the convicted woman. One the left (taken less than 2 years ago) she smiles with outdated bangs, clear skin, and the signature orange NASA jumpsuit we've all admired since grade school. On the right, in the mug shot, she looks sallow and shrunken. "Like a meth addict" my officemate says. I remember being told about the rigorous tests and trails it took to become an astronaut--beyond surgeons, beyond firemen, astronauts were a league of their own. They wanted to be sure those men and women could take the mental strain of life in space. Most people didn't even make it, but this woman had! My mouth was hanging open.

Clearly, based on the news frenzy, I'm not the only one who feels this way. In a bizarre way it's terrifying and reassuring at the same time. I mean, even a woman who's been given the NASA seal of sanity can lose it over love. Clearly, passion is powerful stuff. There she was, haggard and guilty-looking. You can't help but wonder, what hope do we mere earth-dwellers have?

I can almost imagine what she feels like. Well, maybe not the stocking up on garbage bags, duct tape and rubber tubing part, but the anxiety, desperation, and depression that are the underbelly of passion. I look at the dark eyes in the mug shot and I can't help but feel empathy. Not so much for what she's done, but for where she might be in 9 months when the shadow lifts and she has that crucial realization all jilted lovers have had: "there are millions of other men in the world..." It's a life-saving epiphany. I'm afraid, though, this astronaut may be wearing an orange jumpsuit when she has it--and not the NASA issue kind.

elephant ears

Elephants communicate with each other over long distances using infrasonic communication. At 21Hz, these low frequency calls lie below what we could hear with the human ear. And in this ultra-low rumble they sing, like whales, to each other. I imagine it sounds like the low buzz of a plucked bass string, deep and bulbous. A woman named Katy Payne was the first to discover these songs. I listened to her talk about it on the radio last night as I cooked myself dinner. She described families of African Elephants as if they were her own relatives. And although Katy can't hear her elephants' songs with her human ears, she can feel them. When the elephants are communicating, she said, the air throbs.

As I stood in my Portland kitchen bathing scalloped potatoes in boiling milk, I wanted to wrap myself in that feeling. I've been to Africa once. I can still picture the savannah and imagine a sound so deep and full it fills the enormous air, silently. To think of the world filled with sounds, sights, feelings, and ideas larger than our senses can comprehend is humbling. And it's astonishing.

In the songs, she said, it was clear that elephants had community, culture, and relationships. When we discover animals are talking to each other, she said, we assume the main purpose is mating--birdsong, whalesong, it's all seen as courtship. After long descriptions of the intricacies of constantly evolving elephant songs it seemed like a limited, even laughable, perspective. Katy chuckled with the interviewer. Perhaps it wasn't elephants who were more complex than we thought; maybe humans were simplier. Perhaps the "communication is for mating" theory could apply to our own chatter.

I am single again and living alone. That means more time for radio programs and lots of quiet. With all the talking that goes into courtship and the belabored "communicating" that goes into a relationship and a break-up, the aftermath can feel like expansive nothingness. But I'm thinking these days that standing still in the silence, like Katy did, can be the beginning of a discovery of something else--a low-frequency throb. It's something bigger than I've known before. It's humbling and it's astonishing.