By: Alison Jennings
Stay irresponsible. (Allen Ginsberg)
I pray
for dispensation –
no, absolution –
from the should,
as Time,
a booming
metronome,
agitates my tired heart;
and the spirit tugs
on heavy,
handwrought
shackles that thwart
the progress
of its ultimate task:
to harness
mind and body
into a seamless vessel,
then ferry willful
essence ever forward:
to ride quicksilver
winds, to hear
celestial music –
not random static –
to witness Michelangelo
blue skies,
and startlingly white
clouds of puffy purity;
finally, to linger
in a sunlit, dappled garden;
to ecstastically collapse
on fragrant leaves
of grass,
a modern Whitman–
with no weeds,
no needs,
no tasks, no asks,
nothing left to do
but write, and write, and write,
forever . . . .
Alison Jennings is retired from teaching and accounting; throughout her life, she has composed over 400 poems, and recently published three of them, in print journals and online. She lives in Seattle, where she writes poetry whenever she has time.
"This poem arose from a workshop at the Skagit River Poetry Festival in May 2014,
entitled “Metaphysical Poems, Contemporary Poets”. I have always been interested
in the metaphysical, which I think of as the intersection of mind and matter, or where
the physical world intersects with the spiritual or philosophical. The workshop
was taught by Kelly Davio, a wonderful poet, who led us through some imaging
exercises and poetry examples about what makes a poem be about the metaphysical.
I was able to write a draft of a poem which became “Playing Hooky from the Should,”
and Kelly was kind enough to give me some invaluable feedback. I wanted the poem
to portray, in a kind of Walt Whitman manner, the feeling I get sometimes in nature
when the “other” world of the metaphysical feels very close.
Then the poem went through several revisions, and it ultimately ended up as the version accepted by Cathexis Northwest Press!"
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