Elegies and Vacations

from Hank Lazer's Elegies and Vacations (pg. 49)

if i call you
every day
if i call you
every hour
i can get down to
an increment of time
in which change
cannot take place

that anti
epiphanic space
the im
perceptible
modulation
of current circumstance

not repetition
but as stein
had it
minute
differences in
insistence

and somehow
everyone comes to be
an old one

and when we
look closely
very closely

"it is a very
difficult thing
to know anything
of the being
in any one"


Pema Chodron insists that there is no solid ground. That we will fall through anything we thought was bottom. That nothing lasts, that the beloved will, given enough time, become unrecognizable.

And Lazer asks, what if I refuse to look away? Even for a moment. What if I call you every day/ call you every hour. What if I pay close enough heed to each passing moment that change cannot  take place.

Yet, even if one could bend down and collect each moment as it falls, explanation does not erase the distance between "then" and "now."

My mom likes to tell a story about my older sister, Savannah. When Savannah was four, she knocked a glass of water off the table. My mom handed her a dishrag. Savannah got down on all fours, soaked up all the mess, proudly smiled, and, seeing that her rag was full, wrung it out. The water poured back onto the floor. Savannah mopped it back up. And when she saw that her rag was again too wet to soak up any more water, she squeezed it back out on the floor. Several times this happened before my mom stopped her.

(stagnate) 
1. to cease to run or flow, as water, air
2. to stop developing, growing, progressing, or advancing

When our actions don't create space, when we wring the wet towel out onto the floor over and over, when our perspective rusts the gears and constricts the throat of potential, we are made stagnant.

Lazer recognizes the futility in resisting movement. somehow/ everyone comes to be/ an old one

And finally, it is a very/ difficult thing/ to know anything/ of the being/ in any one . When we do look closely enough, we recognize that different things
have/are/will
passed/passing/will pass
through you and I, and "keeping up," looking down, breaking your back to pick up a never-ending trail of somebody else's moments, is to be made stagnant.