On A Glass Land
When a step sends us sliding on a glass land,
we learn wariness.
We’ll believe second, letting others take the lead;
examining the benefits of believing -
an environment much won.
As life’s afternoons disappear
and the daily dark comes so soon,
we mark any opposite with warning -
too busy alive, being one...
A thin divide,
we step out onto glass each waking day,
an average magazine couple
come in years to material age,
learning the new dozen mean words
we use along the red answer -
and that’s
only consistent
with how we see ourselves and our lives
on the hungry edge...
not much more than idea animals
of spot purpose and chance effect.
And that glass plane so square
we try to walk on...
Wouldn’t we stick suggested to what felt familiar?
Glass like ice, cold for space...
Beneath us lies a proper place
for hungry lives to go for nourishment...
We, an all-season age
entered upon
now huge minutes;
a found notice lay growing;
a solution of bread and fishes to hunger,
seeing the glass now clear and limitless beneath -
and that makes us question
what we’ve believed to be...
what we’ve believed to be
those fatal edges where the drop has horror to it...
Maybe they’re there – maybe not...
and even if they are – those limits so like walls
despite their opposite fall –
now we know, seeing clear beneath us,
that down there beneath us,
where we for so long
have lived apart
only on the sliding surface,
used to choring effort just to keep a level pace –
that down there beneath us...
grows the rest of us...
alive in this same life...
as much of us as any waking day can win,
and more than we can ever know...
and if we didn’t try to find that out –
what more we may become –
what opens up our afternoons,
multiplies our hunger in so many other ways -
even as our taste is satisfied by fishes
and miraculous bread...
if we didn’t try to find that out –
as worlds swing open wide –
where’s the fun in that?
© Keith Ward 2006
Re: "On A Glass Land" - Punctuation has been revised from the version of the poem appearing in my book "Hit Head On." Also, italics was added for this online version. Originally I added italics to simulate the way I deliver the poem in oral presentation, but it seemed to muddy the reading of it more than clarify a difficult poem; so I removed the "emphasis" italics.
The photo was taken at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, on Monday March 27. I'd completed the second weekend class in a course on Life Coaching - something that feels closer than anything encountered in my 50 years to being what I want to do when I grow up - and took Monday off too. There was percolating from the weekend goin' on. I drove west in the early morning, not knowing where I would end up or what I'd be doing exactly - just that I wanted to walk, to think, to contemplate, to take pictures, and to read the course materials. On impulse I turned off Route 81 and entered the city, and by following something undefined in me, parked near the college. I walked for a long time - through the campus, then out into residential streets. It was a mulling stroll, not my usual exercise walk (when I do walk, that is - I've been out of the habit lately). The rest of the morning was spent reading, most of the time outside in the sun, sitting in a chair in a grassy courtyard at the law school, the wind clicking the branches of the trees.
I'm on a glass land alright... It's not been once and done - discovering my layer habitat, then keeping that learning. Relearning, I've found, has had to be built into my way of living - reinforcement of knowing - or else it fades... unknowing.... "Life is always pulling you away from the understanding of life." (Anne Morrow Lindbergh) Don't I know it! :)
On the way back to my car I noticed the reflection in the window you see in the photo, stopping abruptly a few paces past the window, then walking backwards to bring the reflection again into view. I might wish for a shot where the window's crosspieces were more symmetrical. But then the reflection wouldn't be like this. I worked with what I had, and made it what you see, enhancing the color and bringing out the blacks and oranges more. The trees reflected in the window were distorted in the first place, the window making them more so. (Check it out on the larger size setting - the intricate lines and the colors are really cool.)
There's something about the photo that speaks to me... the separate panes too... It's not what I originally had in mind for a photo accompanying "On A Glass Land" - I'd thought I'd use something that was definitely evocative of a walking surface - something that would match the theme of there being a "beneath." This photo isn't like that. Literally, anyway. Yet it seems to work with the poem.
And that's one of the best qualities of life and living, ya know? The possibilities... The never knowing from one moment to the next what sure plan will marvelously transmute in a sense of wonder... and through that wonder, for that moment and maybe longer yet, it all feels different... the world... you... You know with certainty that the world and you and everything really is like this - the way you now see it... and potential fills where habit and daily plodding normally live...
There's the fun in that...
On A Glass Land
When a step sends us sliding on a glass land,
we learn wariness.
We’ll believe second, letting others take the lead;
examining the benefits of believing -
an environment much won.
As life’s afternoons disappear
and the daily dark comes so soon,
we mark any opposite with warning -
too busy alive, being one...
A thin divide,
we step out onto glass each waking day,
an average magazine couple
come in years to material age,
learning the new dozen mean words
we use along the red answer -
and that’s
only consistent
with how we see ourselves and our lives
on the hungry edge...
not much more than idea animals
of spot purpose and chance effect.
And that glass plane so square
we try to walk on...
Wouldn’t we stick suggested to what felt familiar?
Glass like ice, cold for space...
Beneath us lies a proper place
for hungry lives to go for nourishment...
We, an all-season age
entered upon
now huge minutes;
a found notice lay growing;
a solution of bread and fishes to hunger,
seeing the glass now clear and limitless beneath -
and that makes us question
what we’ve believed to be...
what we’ve believed to be
those fatal edges where the drop has horror to it...
Maybe they’re there – maybe not...
and even if they are – those limits so like walls
despite their opposite fall –
now we know, seeing clear beneath us,
that down there beneath us,
where we for so long
have lived apart
only on the sliding surface,
used to choring effort just to keep a level pace –
that down there beneath us...
grows the rest of us...
alive in this same life...
as much of us as any waking day can win,
and more than we can ever know...
and if we didn’t try to find that out –
what more we may become –
what opens up our afternoons,
multiplies our hunger in so many other ways -
even as our taste is satisfied by fishes
and miraculous bread...
if we didn’t try to find that out –
as worlds swing open wide –
where’s the fun in that?
© Keith Ward 2006
Re: "On A Glass Land" - Punctuation has been revised from the version of the poem appearing in my book "Hit Head On." Also, italics was added for this online version. Originally I added italics to simulate the way I deliver the poem in oral presentation, but it seemed to muddy the reading of it more than clarify a difficult poem; so I removed the "emphasis" italics.
The photo was taken at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, on Monday March 27. I'd completed the second weekend class in a course on Life Coaching - something that feels closer than anything encountered in my 50 years to being what I want to do when I grow up - and took Monday off too. There was percolating from the weekend goin' on. I drove west in the early morning, not knowing where I would end up or what I'd be doing exactly - just that I wanted to walk, to think, to contemplate, to take pictures, and to read the course materials. On impulse I turned off Route 81 and entered the city, and by following something undefined in me, parked near the college. I walked for a long time - through the campus, then out into residential streets. It was a mulling stroll, not my usual exercise walk (when I do walk, that is - I've been out of the habit lately). The rest of the morning was spent reading, most of the time outside in the sun, sitting in a chair in a grassy courtyard at the law school, the wind clicking the branches of the trees.
I'm on a glass land alright... It's not been once and done - discovering my layer habitat, then keeping that learning. Relearning, I've found, has had to be built into my way of living - reinforcement of knowing - or else it fades... unknowing.... "Life is always pulling you away from the understanding of life." (Anne Morrow Lindbergh) Don't I know it! :)
On the way back to my car I noticed the reflection in the window you see in the photo, stopping abruptly a few paces past the window, then walking backwards to bring the reflection again into view. I might wish for a shot where the window's crosspieces were more symmetrical. But then the reflection wouldn't be like this. I worked with what I had, and made it what you see, enhancing the color and bringing out the blacks and oranges more. The trees reflected in the window were distorted in the first place, the window making them more so. (Check it out on the larger size setting - the intricate lines and the colors are really cool.)
There's something about the photo that speaks to me... the separate panes too... It's not what I originally had in mind for a photo accompanying "On A Glass Land" - I'd thought I'd use something that was definitely evocative of a walking surface - something that would match the theme of there being a "beneath." This photo isn't like that. Literally, anyway. Yet it seems to work with the poem.
And that's one of the best qualities of life and living, ya know? The possibilities... The never knowing from one moment to the next what sure plan will marvelously transmute in a sense of wonder... and through that wonder, for that moment and maybe longer yet, it all feels different... the world... you... You know with certainty that the world and you and everything really is like this - the way you now see it... and potential fills where habit and daily plodding normally live...
There's the fun in that...