Day 11 - "truth lives in brief moments"

I realized today, before fully finishing the title of today's blog, that I'm still following the 30 days of poetry format I started about a year ago. Obviously that failed due to lack of internet access, but for some reason I still feel like keeping up with it. In my heart, sitting here now around the same time of year as the last, I feel like I never really left off on that pursuit for some reason - that I was only detained for a while. So bear with me, folks - I promise this 30 days of poetry will come to an end this year. And hopefully within a timely fashion, so you'll be able to enjoy new poems posted nearly every day to make up for my long leave of absence.

When I was considering which poem I ought to post today, I decided to turn to something that's been on my mind very heavily lately - the auctioning-off of my family's farm. I helped build part of the house in my youth, and for the last year I've been living in it out in the country on 270 acres of meadow and forest land. I've loved it, I've worked it, I've felt it - it's become almost a brother to me, this land. To have to leave it by the end of July nearly breaks my heart, as I look out on the garden I've started and know that I will never be able to harvest it and enjoy it again. I suppose it's maybe something similar to a mother losing their child, though not as extreme of course.

In any case, separation and change in one's life is as common as the rising and setting of the sun. It's something we must expect, no matter how much stock we put in things remaining the same forever. I've found recently, through several events, that the true happiness you find in this world is within yourself, and it is to be found in every new day - every new instant. Appreciating right now - not the future nor the past, because neither of them truly belong to us. I may die tomorrow, but today I smile and I stand in the sunlight. Not always because I feel like it, but because I must. My mother would say, 'fake it till you make it' or 'laugh in spite of'. I never found those sayings appealing. I don't believe in faking, or doing things in spite of. I believe in believing in what you feel because you understand it - not fooling yourself into feeling it. Every day I strive to fully understand and know the way this world functions and to see the beauty of it, even during times that, to others, seem a downfall.

It's tough, but I'm beginning to see the method to what we may call madness is simply the gorgeous, unfathomable, unstoppable mechanism of the universe. A poet that exemplifies this ideal in his work, whom I greatly admire, is Robinson Jeffers. I wrote this poem in memory of him, and since it is in relation to an occurrence on the farm that I will soon be leaving, I thought it appropriate for today's posting. Enjoy the work, readers, and enjoy the truth that exists in the world even in the most minute happenings that we are privileged enough to witness if we but allow ourselves that brief moment of introspection. :)


"truth lives in brief moments"


In the dewy, muggy sunrise of a day in mid June,
I awoke to the sound of a tapping outside.

I then shuffled to the window and so witnessed the sight
Of a diligent young woodpecker knocking away at my porch.

My first thought was to shoo it away from my home,
But before I could move the reasons flew from my mind

For I was shown, in that moment, all the things I would tend
Would one day return to their home in this land.

And so I stood there awhile, and watched the woodpecker tap -
Tap away at my importance, my rashness… my world.

And it became rather pleasing
To see it slowly destroyed.


For Robinson Jeffers


- Joshua Clarke