On Love and Truth
The dead, it’s often said, died doing what they love,
a choice in life since dying, after all, is still a life activity,
and thus those of us who do so choose otherwise
can feel gratefully relieved from excessive concern.
Our thoughts and prayers suffice. For what’s true
is what choosing makes it so, so says the bard
though we could say the Bible to put the best face
on choice and who’d care? We stopped once
on a walk up to Taughannock Falls to watch firemen
dangle ropes down to a man clinging halfway
up or down ( optimist/pessimist, you choose)
to the soft shale cliff face, gently crumbling
dust and shards in a small stream from his perch.
Would his fingers hold out? If the sling reached
him in time, could he engage? Had he climbed
from the top or bottom? Had a cosmic peace
filled his soul like Prince Andrei dying in Tolstoy’s
War and Peace, or was he just pooping in terror?
We discussed these possibilities, some choices,
others beyond human will to change,
yet we took time to question if huge centipedes
that were scurrying across the cement path
from the talus rocks were called millipedes.
Above the thunder of the famous falls cascading
like a gray, eternal pillar into its misty pool
someone said, Well, at least… And on the way
back we discussed love as an intransitive verb.
a choice in life since dying, after all, is still a life activity,
and thus those of us who do so choose otherwise
can feel gratefully relieved from excessive concern.
Our thoughts and prayers suffice. For what’s true
is what choosing makes it so, so says the bard
though we could say the Bible to put the best face
on choice and who’d care? We stopped once
on a walk up to Taughannock Falls to watch firemen
dangle ropes down to a man clinging halfway
up or down ( optimist/pessimist, you choose)
to the soft shale cliff face, gently crumbling
dust and shards in a small stream from his perch.
Would his fingers hold out? If the sling reached
him in time, could he engage? Had he climbed
from the top or bottom? Had a cosmic peace
filled his soul like Prince Andrei dying in Tolstoy’s
War and Peace, or was he just pooping in terror?
We discussed these possibilities, some choices,
others beyond human will to change,
yet we took time to question if huge centipedes
that were scurrying across the cement path
from the talus rocks were called millipedes.
Above the thunder of the famous falls cascading
like a gray, eternal pillar into its misty pool
someone said, Well, at least… And on the way
back we discussed love as an intransitive verb.
