a brainy birthday

Today is the day that Facebook is made for, and look how it makes sure I don't miss it somehow! Poetry Friday friends, whatever it says about me, I now claim the truth that I like a little fuss about my birthday, so yup, let me post about celebrations, age and mortality.  And sheep's brain. 

 

Birthday Poem | Paisley Rekdal

 

It is important to remember that you will die,

lifting the fork with the sheep's brain

lovingly speared on it to the mouth: the little

piece smooth on the one side as a baby

mouse pickled in wine; on the other, blood-

plush and intestinal atop its bed of lentils.

The lentils were once picked over for stones

in the fields of India perhaps, the sun

shining into tractor blades slow moving

as the swimmer’s arms that pierce,

then rise, then pierce again the cold

water of this river outside your window called

The Heart or The Breast, even, but meaning

something more than this, beyond

the crudeness of flesh, though what

is crude about flesh anyway, watching yourself

every day lose another bit of luster?

It is wrong to say one kind of beauty

replaces another. Isn’t it your heart

along with its breast muscles that

has started to weaken; solace

isn’t possible for every loss, or why else

should we clutch, stroke, grasp, love

the little powers we once were born with?

Perhaps the worst thing in the world

would be to live forever.

Otherwise, what would be the point

of memory, without which

we would have nothing to hurt

or placate ourselves with later?

Look. It is only getting worse

from here on out. Thank God. Otherwise

the sun on this filthy river

could never be as boring or as poignant,

the sheep’s brain trembling on the fork

wouldn’t seem once stung

by the tang of grass, by the call

of some body distant and beloved to it

still singing through the milk. The fork

would be only a fork, and not the cool

heft of it between your fingers, the scratch

of lemon in the lentils, onions, parsley

slick with blood; food that,

even as you lift it to your mouth,

you never thought you’d eat. And do.

 

from Imaginary Vessels. Copyright © 2016

 

I could write a thousand birthday poems and none of them would feature sheep's brain, "food that...you never thought you'd eat," and wouldn't. But isn't that the wonder of a well-constructed poem, a life of reading deeply? That we can find the part that applies, and then apply the part we can find that stretches sensation, emotion?  That we can begin to imagine a life in which we are named Paisley and eat lentils and sheep's brain beside a filthy river with gratitude for the tang of grass, the scratch of lemon?

The Poetry Foundation also gifted me today with this brief but full article about days full of poet birthdays.  Enjoy! 

We are rounded up today by dear Sylvia and Janet at Poetry for Children, where they are celebrating the publication of their newest Pomelo anthology, THINGS WE EAT.  I don't believe it contains sheep's brain. 😊