THIS PHOTOGRAPH woke me early this morning and wouldn’t let me get back to sleep. I found it yesterday, searching for photos for this post but decided not to use it because – what can you say to follow such a picture?
Poetry certainly seems inadequate. That’s what I’ve been bumping up against ever since Russia invaded Ukraine. Everything one might say in light of the state of the world right now seems paltry, petty, simply inadequate.
But you can’t simply be mute. Can you?
This photo is of refugees from the Syrian civil war, which began March 15, 2011, as part of the Arab Spring, and has been going on for 11 years. Although it’s ferocity is much diminished from its peak, Syria remains a place people risk their lives to get away from. When it began, Russia, along with Iran, sent troops and weapons to assist the dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and the Syrian Army to brutally quell the rebellion. They didn’t succeed, and the war spread among many factions, becoming more and more brutal and eventually costing 400,000 killed, and causing the largest refugee crisis in the world today – approximately 5.6 million citizens living abroad, and another 6 million internally displaced.
However, Ukraine is catching up fast. The war there is only 1 month old and has already driven 10 million people from their homes, 3.7 million of whom have left the country.
Even as I write this, I’m again having second thoughts about the poems included here. They are most certainly inadequate accompaniment to the terrifying scene captured in this remarkable photograph. And, again, I’m thinking silence may be the most articulate statement of all.
And then I think – this very struggle to find the words, even if they are simply that we are here, struggling, is also terribly important.
So, with thanks to my wife, Gail Gibbons, for suggesting that I explore this further, here are the words I have to offer in the last week of March, 2022.
SPRING 2022 It's war time I’m tellin’ ya, sad times, disturbin’ times, crazy times, heat waves in the permafrost, cold blast freeze outs in hotternhell Texas, I’m not kiddin. People are wandering an wondering. People are mutterin’ an upset People are packing, an I’m not just talking about their suitcase either. An all my words dried up. They ran away, can’t find em, hiding out someplace I guess till this all blows over. Easy man, chill a little, Bro. Take a breath. Walk outside, look around, open your eyes it’s spring time, man, leaves an everything, sunshine, and the birds, you know what I mean? it’s getting warmer, haven’t you noticed? buds are poppin out, flowers and all Summer’s comin. Please don’t remind me about Summer, but Spring, ok, sure. Maybe. Spring might be nice, but what about the billion-dollar weapons deals? And missiles going off, coming down? The shopping center maternity hospital theater bombs? And the people – what to do, how to help, what to think – how to say it? I don’t know. And the politicians, the politicians are back again lying like rugs all over the place sayin it’s them not us, you not me till there’s nowhere to stand. And I just can’t find the words. Where are the words to use to say all this? But you know what? I just looked out the window. And I do have to agree. About the Spring thing. It’s true. I can see it with my own eyes. Bad as it is. Crazy as it is: everything splitting, falling apart, stabbed, blasted, hurt like hell, knotted up, crying out, unsayable. Still – green coming outa all a the trees – only a day or two ago were brown and gray. Spring? I forgot. I didn’t imagine. What do they say? Renewal? Rebirth? I don’t know. Maybe. I’m a little cynical these days. But I have to admit. It looks nice. So thanks for pointing it out – that Spring has come around again this year. Even though it means hotternhell Summer is headed this way and I don’t like even thinkin about that not even a bit let me tell you. But Spring reminds me that the world is moving around the sun a little bit at a time, an time is moving – slow – so slow – but it’s moving, and we might not be stuck in this forever. Bill Jeffers 3/26/2022
LOOK AT THIS
What’s worth saying again?
That the mountains are there in a rim in the distance
with the huge pale bowl of sky bending overhead
and the two-day-old-budded trees still winter brown and only
the guess of green within them swaying with the early morning sun
glaring in the bird-tossing wind?
When all these spring things have already been seen –
and said, written, drawn, painted, sung, danced, howled
by countless other eyes, hands, feet, mouths, and hearts before
through ten thousand years at least
And so it’s written here once more: this beautiful morning.
On these pages, in my book.
The book of me
In the library of me.
Part of the museum of me.
And as I’m writing, thinking, searching for the words for this experience.
it doesn’t occur to me that I’m not the only one
who ever saw this, felt this, realized this, understood this,
and was moved enough to write it down.
And I write it, never thinking even once of what’s already been made
of beautiful mornings just like this,
how many thousand times before,
by all those other lives, eyes, hearts, those minds,
their books, pictures, poems, their songs.
So, I walk into the room, open wide my book, and say – look at this.
I’m writing this. So even if I wasn’t thinking about it then, I know:
it’s been seen before, thought before, written before, etcetera, etcetera.
Many times.
But not by me. I can’t help it. It’s an impulse.
A human impulse.
_____
Driving up the highway, seventy mile an hour:
The likeness of a horse’s head woven into a rickety timber fence along the road,
A flowerpot on either side of a doorway, each with its own red bloom,
Oddly twisted tree limbs leaned like scribbling along the fence at the back of someone’s tiny yard,
Smooth river rocks lined up atop an adobe wall, big to small, just so,
Faded on the doorway of an old house, a painted rainbow sun,
Flat scraps of metal hung from the branch of a scrub tree swing in the wind,
and on and on these small gestures spark beside us as we drive. . .
While all around us, the vast prairie
rimmed by mountains and the great sky –
We are so small.
These tiny flashes all along the road –
each one someone saying, I think I’ll do
this, today.
Hey! Look at this.
This is nice, isn’t it?
Whadaya think?
See?
Look at this.
I did this.
I like this.
I like it.
This makes me happy.
Bill Jeffers
3/23/2022
ALL THAT’S PROMISED
The weather warms,
then each twig end, anchored
where it paused those months ago,
bulges with a new leaf bud
that suddenly bursts pale green and tender
in a new day,
knowing nothing more
than the promise of light.
Bill Jeffers
3/18/21
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