Quiet World

I wish it could just be a quiet world

Though not because there’s nothing left to say –

I.

Inside a heated library

The dust will never settle down

For long. The people passing by

Recall a soft, faint memory

And wonder if their friends remain.

The hallways breathe and circulate

Even after the doors have closed.

No doors are closed – not here – for me.

I remember reading you – each page

      I turned with you laid out upon my pillow

      I stuttered and I sped through it as though

I thought the fastest finish time could gauge

How much I’d learned from you, but at this stage

      I would have learned as much had I gone slow,

      As I should have read you, so I would know

You, and not to have desires assuaged.

But now I can remember only notions –

      And left with vague suggestions of your value,

      What is there really to be said of you?

I certainly, at first, gave my devotion

      But frustrated with how I never grew

      I walked away in search of novel views.

I remember every time your fingers

      Gently touched the covers, rubbed my spine

      And studied me, as if a text divine

In your eyes, as they stumbled and lingered

And breathed in every word or thing there

      There was to me: How my paragraphs aligned

      And how my lace and stitching was designed

My body sang for you – would any singer?

But you could never understand beyond

      That which was plainly scribed for you to read

      You could or would not see intricacies

Or give to me the thought deserved, you yawned

      And put me on your floor, then felt no need

      To open though I gave you liberty.

II.

I wish it could become a quiet world

But I feel that we all are too afraid

To risk the sun when guaranteed the shade

Or buy more thoughts when all our debts have paid

Or take the world with us – it’s not too late –

But why force a quiet world on others?

Too often friends we’re thrown away

Or put as if upon a shelf

To be called on at leisure –

But while others can be engrossed

With us we cannot return the interest

And the hours spent, and the flies buzzing at the windows

Could be escaping sounds of lost communions

Never to be fulfilled.

Inside a morning escapade

Where I forget my dreams

I stumble down to my reserve

Of life lessons and start to read:

Life is romance, a passion borne

And bred and read in history

Which shows the comedy in our

Manners, and facing tragedy

What do we do but turn quiet?

An insect buzzes at the glass (my thought)

These aren’t my kind of dreams. Though I’ll admit

When summer’s at its peak I’ll sit and read

On occasion – a midafternoon fit

Can settle down – my impish eyes mislead

And wink – and I abrupt and I awake –

Where is the Comedy in this? Concede

To me: We laugh not ‘cause we wish to slake

A humored thirst, but to untie our knots

And hide our tension, should we start to break.

An insect buzzes at the glasses – I thought.

--

Given time – does every summer cool?

The ancient “star-crossed lovers” has a twist

Forced upon it. Despite impending doom

It sparkles so casually persists

Because our culture thinks not, just assumes.

In some ways I feel such a thing is apt

For loves drawn out by cologne and perfume

Their comprehension of their love is trapped

Like Romeo and Juliet, the fools –

To be star-crossed’s to die – not to be rapt.

Given time, most every summer cools.

--

Here, memory rolls through the boulevards

It matters not what any king carried

Or what exact phrases a pharaoh hacked,

I feel our views of history vary

Though humans never left their common tract

Of feelings and desires and disgusts –

We disregard the sentiments, and facts

We slobber after, little though we trust

The truth of John or Henry or Richard,

And learn nothing from our pedantic thrusts.

Here, memory rolls past the boulevards.

--

To blame or not the gardener for the rot?

Everybody has, I feel, decisions

Whether or not their garden’s to be kept

And they, as Hamlet, can with fore-visions

Remove the weeds that surely now have crept

Within their lives and that sully the ground

That could have nursed any flower – Except

Now herein lies the issue that abounds

Which plants to treat as weeds and which to not?

In such decisions all tragedy’s found.

To blame or not the gardener for the rot.

III.

I wish it still could be a quiet world

Perhaps, the ocean with no sound, but still with spray

A place where one could think and never play

A beach read can be taken anywhere

And lent about to almost anyone

Flapping back to you, little though you care

With sodden pages, bleached beneath the sun

All paperbacks awash with poor persuasion

Could be swept out from shore without concern

You wouldn’t mind to meet them on occasion

To talk briefly perhaps – though not to learn.

But this is not the same for borrowed books

Or ones that teach you secrets of yourself

Their power lies far deeper than with hooks

That could be found lounging on any shelf.

            Quiet accomplices in your travels

            To keep you loved, secure when you unravel.

Have you ever tried to pull apart the binding on a book?

Maybe just to find out what would happen?

To test the limits of how long it could last your company?

I warn you, do not try this with a book you are close to

For you will never have that book the same again.

When dissecting a frog, can it ever be revived?

Does dissecting a joke make it more humorous?

When you start to unravel all your friends

They do not return to you

And then there is no one to put their hand upon your shoulder

And say, “Enough,” when you have lost yourself

In your own thoughts and gone too far.

IV.

A quiet world is now within my reach.

Our man fancied himself a modern Moses,

Or thoroughly Thoreau in each regard.

But in a small backyard,

How much can you explore yourself and be truly engrossed?

Whether a mile from the nearest neighbor,

Or talking to a flaming bush high above camp

To light that bush or light the cabin’s lamp

Someone else must have done the labor.

The doors were open, I was free to pass

But not every option held with it promise.

O Quiet world, I wept for you and I bled for you

And collected thoughts and fragment scraps

And wasted time, or thoughts that lapsed

Away from the material world, and towards you:

Many a pilgrim or a traveler searching for his Mecca

Or his Nirvana, who wants to shake Siddartha’s

Hand finds

            They found exactly what they wished,

            Or tasted their final sweet kiss

            They swam beneath the river bank

            They flew –

                        that nothing is what they want.

And quiet world swallow me,

And me is just a heartbeat, or less

and me is just an excuse

and me is just a taste of my personality

and me is nothing without us to make a distinction

and me – should not be for eternity.

            I only want a quiet world again

            If I am not the only one in it.