Before Love there’s Attention

 

I wish you wouldn’t have called me a poet,
now every morning I wake up and try to prove it.
Try to show how everything, like the blue bra
draped over the shower rod, or the half-flower
of a broken fridge magnet, are the bright cries of tigers.
Or how the magpie, now chasing a black squirrel,
just swooped in from another world.

It’s exhausting — a gosling, to the desires of others,
one more somnambulist under the collective hypnosis.
I would have made a better wind instrument,
or a kite, or an accident scene, pondered over
by three gumshoes, each arriving at different conclusions.
Friend, if you showed up at my door with some other friend,
I’d be a mixed metaphor.

One day though, looking through an upper window,
I fell utterly in love. How does that happen?!
And all I was doing was paying attention.
It was like some merciful therapist
unclenched my little fist of self-interest,
like some kindly optometrist gave me new lenses,
brought into focus a wholly benign and gentle light,
enfolding me, releasing me.
I didn’t kneel, I stood watching, terribly awake,
and prayed for the daybreak of justice
for every guileless Job on the globe,
and fortunes of restorative forgiveness,
for the rest of us.

Mercy, understanding, attends the mindful gaze — I believe it,
and good to have had the gleam of it,
but another thing to maintain it — remember it,
work for it — thwart the sidelong glance
and inward turn that betrays it.

It’s not wrong, in this overwrought knock-down world,
to attempt significance.
I don’t mean stand out like a grease spot of celebrity
on your county’s khaki trousers.
I mean, simply, leave love letters at the doors
of those who care for the sick and the oppressed;
carry a sign to the steps of city hall,
saying you’re someone who’s paying attention.

And every so often,
                                     you glimpse a world of redemption.

 

18 Comments

    1. “How does that happen? And all I was doing was paying attention.” Gets me everytime. Like the dogwalker this morning, waving at me from the crosswalk, or the gathering of bright yellow leaves at the edge of the eavestrough. Brilliant, all of it, mercifully. Thank you.

  1. I really love the closing stanzas here Steve – could be a manifesto.

    “I don’t mean stand out like a grease spot of celebrity
    on your county’s khaki trousers.
    I mean, simply, leave love letters at the doors
    of those who care for the sick and the oppressed;
    carry a sign to the steps of city hall,
    saying you’re someone who’s paying attention.

    And every so often,
    you glimpse a world of redemption.”

    Amen.

  2. This morning I notice
    the return of the Juncos to my feeder,
    and this… “I wish you wouldn’t have called me a poet,
    now every morning I wake up and try to prove it.”
    blesses my day,
    of ways to begin in gratitude – commune with birds,
    and enjoy the gentle visit of a very kind friend
    who knows.

    Thank you Stephen, always.

  3. Beautiful – but you weren’t just paying attention: your attention was guided by Love – and that makes all the difference!! The road less travelled by….

  4. Dear Stephen,

    I have sent this poem to almost all of my friends and family. I read it to a reading group and have committed it to memory.

    Thank you. Poems like these are lifelines.

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