It’s not the Chans de Lise here on the cement patio
With the Formica tables and plastic wicker chairs,
And the brooding gas heaters and square green umbrellas.
And the lope of a lone cheerleader late for the parade,
Her flying paper pom pom grafted to her sturdy wrist,
Does not recall for me the Cirque du Soleil; at best,
I’m reminded of lawn tractors beneath fat men with Fez’s.
And the Taj Mahal Cake Walk cover coming through
The speaker screwed to the side of the corrugated
Steel siding, under E in COFFEE, is not poetry.
Nor is the waspy drone of the single engine Cessna
Listing overhead. Nor, for that matter, is this.
And when Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in the Café de Flora,
He may have been condemned to be free, but he was not
Condemned by deals going loudly down on iPhones.
Or by the Constables’ talk of barbeques, or the
Blithe banter of sightseers strung out on their name tags.
Yet, beyond the hell and convulsions of cars,
Like this lime low-rise coupe lurching on the avenue;
And though my mind bleeds out on this tilting table,
Like an oil spill on the ocean of days;
The rain is not falling on my shoes; her eyes still
Rise kind and wise. And in the deserted lot, the open
Face of an ox-eye daisy is turned up to the sky.
Did you write this during the capital ex opening parade? I missed the parade, but my bus was delayed and crowded in the morning in the midst of the “hell and convulsions of cars”.
In my abnormal psych class we talked about how overcrowding has detrimental effects on animals and humans. Of course it is difficult to do ethical research on humans (other than longitudinal studies where we observe places that are already overcrowded) but a guy named John B. Calhoun did some interesting experiments with mice back in the 80’s that should definitely make us think twice about our population growth and bringing any more offspring into this world.
Check out http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_v129/ai_4258429/
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun
Interestingly Calhoun’s comments about our need to develop an “electronic extension of the brain” has happened in a sense with email and Facebook and twitter, which is I think why we have been able to adapt to crowding and overpopulation without going insane. We can still connect to people we care about in the midst of a mass of people who are essentially faceless to us… what a strange thing to think about.
Stunning, Stephen. Stunning.
Teryl, You guessed it, on a patio during the parade I kept myself absent from. Thanks for your thoughts and for pointing me to Calhoun.
Craig, You are very kind. Thank you, and thank you for your truly insightful posts at http://windandwaterfarm.blogspot.com/