POEM OF THE DAY: Tracy K. Smith's "Everything That Ever Was"
I've been meaning to read Tracy K. Smith's Pulitzer Prize-winning Life on Mars (Greywolf Press, 2011) for a long time now. What was I waiting for? I have yet to read anything like it. It's a challenging book, emotionally and existentially––but Smith's clear, confident, witty honesty, and her apparent fearlessness in asking the questions that matter, is what make these poems so special. The book is a thrilling intermingling of earthly reality––pop-culture, American monuments, the weather, death and birth––and those mysterious forces that roil, invisibly, in the space between.
Sometimes space scares me. Sometimes the world scares me. But the speakers in Life on Mars are highly competant and trust-worthy tour-guides. Don't expect it to be easy––traveling into the Great Unknown, only to arrive back at yourself. But expect to return a smarter, more feeling, Earthling––with her feet on the ground, her eyes to the sky, and her heart beating unabashedly in her chest.
The following poem from the book's fourth section, "Everything That Ever Was," is one of my favorites (but I have many):
EVERYTHING THAT EVER WAS
Like a wide wake, rippling
Infinitely into the distance, everything
That ever was still is, somewhere,
Floating near the surface, nursing
Its hunger for you and me
And the now we've named
And made a place of.
Like groundswell sometimes
It surges up, claiming a little piece
Of where we stand.
Like the wind the rains ride in on,
It sweeps across the leaves,
Pushing in past the windows
We didn't slam quickly enough.
Dark water it will take days to drain.
It surprised us last night in my sleep.
Brought food, a gift. Stood squarely
There between us, while your eyes
Danced toward mine, and my hands
Sat working a thread in my lap.
Up close, it was so thin. And when finally
You reached for me, it backed away,
Bereft, but not vanquished. Today,
Whatever it was seems slight, a trail
Of cloud rising up like smoke.
And the trees that watch as I write
Sway in the breeze, as if all that stirs
Under the soil is a little tickle of knowledge
The great blind roots will tease through
And push eventually past.
