ONE LIGHT, ONE DARK

TWO POEMS

Rummaging around in my files I was struck by these two pieces from 2018, the first written in October, and the second written a month later — the day before Thanksgiving — not quite a year and a half before the pandemic began.

The first piece, EVERY DAY, rings true for me still, in spite of what has taken place since 2018. At least here in this sheltered life that I lead.

The second, A LIST OF CONDITIONS OR POSSIBLY A PRAYER, is revealed by the pandemic and the completion of the four-year term of Donald Trump and now a year of Joe Biden’s, as a description of unsuspectedly precarious privilege — for citizens of the United States, particularly white, middle-class, and those more well-to-do citizens. For everyone else, the conditions I listed were not the case to begin with and are visibly less so now.

I can also state with some assurance that since it was written by a white, middle-class, male, Baby Boomer — myself — there was an assumption that the bounty and excesses described, both sincerely and ironically, would go on pretty much forever, or at least as long as I did. The last three years have erased that assumption. Possibly they’ve helped us recognize how unique these bounteous times a small population of us have been gifted to live in for most of our lives have been.

EVERY DAY

The coffee sweet and creamy with that sour smoky bite underneath. 
The day lightening slowly outside – again. 
So what? Why bother to write it down? 
It happens and has happened and will happen every single day forever 
as far as it makes sense to measure time past and time to come. 
And still, when I notice it happening – the world outside the windows 
seeping slowly out of darkness into view– the darkness 
slipping away like scrim after scrim being lifted 
until sun’s bright-shining and the world’s awake – I am delighted 
and reassured at the softly rising passing from night into day. 
And what could be better than writing it down – here –  
on this Saturday morning in October – when I will almost certainly, 
forget completely this entire day and
it will blur into all the others speeding away behind me. 
But reading this sometime in time to come, if I ever do, I will be reminded 
not of this specific day, but of the act of witnessing the beautiful passage 
from empty darkness to lavish light.
     Bill Jeffers
     10/20/2018

A LIST OF CONDITIONS OR POSSIBLY A PRAYER

It’s dark outside.
There is light coming.
The world we live in is nearly perfect:
	no plagues, no war, famine, unbearable poverty,
	even scarcity is scarce,
	no daily search for water to drink.

It all runs, more or less, as well as it needs to 
in order to let me believe that it will always be this way.

It’s 5:30am and I will head to my meeting in 30 minutes in my truck,
	steadfast, and still shiny when I wash it, 
filled up with remarkably cheap gasoline.
I’ll drive down paved, more or less smooth streets,
with operating traffic lights and adequately painted 
white and yellow stripes
that almost all us citizens follow and obey
just because we are supposed to 
and it all goes better when we do.

There is no chaos here. Or very little.

We watch those places on TV
	where deprivation, violence, disaster, and hardship
	reign, feeling bad for the people living there 
 in a helpless sort of way – too bad
there’s nothing, really, to be done.
And then we switch the channel or turn it off
	to go make some adjustment to our nearly perfect,
	approaching luxurious lives
with options to be taken and choices to be made
regarding the next hour or 15 minutes or 
as long as whatever it is that we’re regarding
	holds our attention and pleases us.
And if we make the wrong choice and find ourselves bored
	Or somewhere we don’t want to be – it doesn’t really matter.
	We go on to something else or somewhere else
	or turn the TV back on.

We live well back from the edge
	where the sky is blue or will be soon,
	and we almost never consider that there is 
	any edge at all, let alone 
that we could ever find ourselves tottering 
at its brink.

Thank you, unknowable force 
presence overseer god great spirit,
for the bounty and peace of our lives.

If it is a reward, we must have been very good indeed,
or accomplished some notable improvement somewhere
in an earlier existence.

If it is merely the resting place of a tiny wooden ball sent
clacking randomly across the shallow pockets of a roulette wheel,
then we are luckier than we can imagine, 
and thank all the many gods there are
we landed here.
     Bill Jeffers
     11/21/2018