Leveler Poetry Journal
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Route

 

For many years life won’t

let you in, which will only

make you think

more of it. Even time

will pass on. Time will grow

thin like a ponytail. You’ll take buses

to trains to planes.

You’ll be disappointed

it was such a short

and comfortable ride.

You’ll see people die and wonder

how you could possibly live

enough to make up for it.

You can’t.

In darkness, the sky will

become the hide

of some gargantuan

mammal. Possibly a parent.

Heed this: Admire the details

on buildings. Bask in material

triumphs. Death will be there.

Ignore it for now.




Lizzie Harris

levelheaded: Route

 

It’s no surprise that there are literal routes within the poem. The speaker tells us we’ll “take buses / to trains to planes.” We’re on board with the poem’s metaphor early – life as “route”/death as destination – but the buses, trains, and planes don’t correspond to specific parts of the metaphor, at least not in the same way as “short / and comfortable ride” seems to correspond to certain way of moving through life. Instead, the buses, trains, and planes exist outside the metaphor – a convoluted trip to a funeral (‘Possibly a parent”), perhaps? This moment smudges the hard lines between the tenor and the vehicle of the metaphor. The possibility that there is a real memory from which the speaker’s words originate gives the poem an additional layer.

 

The speaker’s voice drives the poem forward. She is confident in the wisdom of her dictates. Speaking about death, she commands us to “Ignore it for now.” On making up for others’ deaths, she tells us, “You can’t.” She predicts our disappointment by telling us frankly, “You’ll be disappointed.” These moments of self-assuredness seem like a salve against the speaker’s own loss of control. She can issue commandments, but she cannot control life or death. Death undercuts the speaker’s confidence, creating a sense of pathos around her authority, around her ultimate over-confidence. This is compounded by the fact that she tells us to “ignore” death right after she’s spent 20 or so lines not ignoring death. “For now” might be a very short period of time.

 

The poem is written simply. The language is clear. The speaker is authoritative. There is a clear message. But all this belies the speaker’s emotional complexity. She tells us what we will be, what we can, and what we can’t do. But she lets out just enough slack to make us think there is hope tucked into her apparent certainty. After all, it’s life – ponytails and buses and architecture and disappointment – that make the speaker want to ignore death in the first place. It’s being let into life, wanting to “live / enough to make up for it,” that makes “for now” a potentially impenetrable ideal.

 

 

 

– The Editors