Work-in-progress
We sat here talking
low last night while the sun set.
An odd couple, old
and young, patient and
care-giver, intimate and
other. As the light
fades tonight, the geese
gather, ducks cry out crossing
the water. This too
is our world, now, both
together and apart, while
there is time to spare.
The poem opens with a mysterious ‘we’ talking. The context is twilight, and the reader may picture sunset reds and pinks. The image may evoke a primordial conviviality like early people gathered around a fire. The reader strains to listen to the low voices. THe sunset here is a verbal phrase ‘while the sun set’. This underlines the poignancy of the passing moment. We then start to learn who the ‘we’ are, an ‘odd couple’. This particularity resists reduction to dichotomy even as we find this is a couple of opposites. The theme of time again comes to the fore as we find they are ‘old and young’. They are also ‘patient and caregiver’, the first term evoking waiting and longsuffering, but also passion, the latter agapeic generosity. The couple is finally described as philosophical categories, ‘intimate’ and ‘other’. These are categorical opposites yet neither category woiuld have full meaning without the other. The scene then shifts to the present, yet there is continuity since now the sun is also setting, the light also fading. Into this scene is introduced the image of a flock of geese coming together, an image of communal, natural togetherness. The view pans to ducks quacking as they cross the cove. Here we may see an echo of the doublet of caregiver adn patient, teh geese agapeic and gregarious, the ducks erotic and adventurous. THe poet then addresses the other figured in the poems as well as us as readers and embraces this scene of passage with warmth. It is different and yet it is ‘ours’ not as posession but as common ground and ven as a sp[here of memory and imagination which the poet and his companion make together and still take part in even as they are apart. Finally we are reminded of the fleeting quality of this world. It is ours while there’s time. The colloquial turn of the final phrase leaves us with an intimate pang at once poignant and full of urgent delight.
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