levelheaded: Black Forest

 

There are a couple of reasons the bench in this poem might be “worn.” Maybe it sees frequent use. It’s been bowed and bent under the weight of so many exhausted overlookers. Or maybe it’s never used and thus unmaintained. It has been left in the elements to decompose. Of course, we can imagine the bench has been “worn” by any combination of these two possibilities. There’s a whole unclassifiable spectrum of forces that can wear down a bench.  But we want to point out that, depending on how we read this single word, we could be reading two completely different poems.

 

If the bench is worn out by overuse, the poem might be read as a quiet paean to our uniquely human ability to recognize a fill a “need.” The bench is a small example of how we shape the world. It becomes the viewpoint from which we see the “overlook” and by extension the “Black Forest.” Supporting this reading, the word “worn” implies something is actively wearing the bench down. The poem’s brevity bears out expectations of how a meditative poem like this might look and sound. Its short final sentence punctuates the poem’s sincerity.

 

But if the bench looks worn because no one knows it’s there or bothers to maintain it, the poem might be read as a critique of the human impulse to metaphorically “put a bench” in every corner of the world. In this reading the bench is a waste. The speaker’s skeptical line, “If you come through,” is accompanied by an eye roll. The final line is an indictment of the bureaucratic ideologue who proposed the bench in the first place.

 

Short poems ask us to provide an overlay of our own complicated ideas and emotions. This poem is a particular success because our two readings, apparently opposite, are not exclusive. They are to be combined and reworked on each read. The poem is a nature poem without nature. It’s a people poem without specific people. It’s a celebration and a condemnation, all in 17 words. And its ambiguity, its amorphousness, is why we can easily come up with 350 words on what makes it special.

 

 

-The Editors