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To Being This Human

 

Sometimes I think the earliest ancestors worried as I worry.

 

Maybe they counted footsteps to keep themselves calm.

 

Maybe they saw a complex pattern to being this human.

 

I know people experience hurt on a spectrum of important to quite a bit.

 

Our little feet tucked inside our little shoes.

 

Our arms and legs open to the world.

 

I have a maternal moment on the sidewalk.

 

My brother is inside my head.

 

I don’t speak of him very often except for now.

 

My maternal worry wants to know more than I am able.

 

I am older and accustomed to protecting although failing with him.

 

He inhabits an anger I cannot traverse.

 

Buddha teaches impermanence.

 

I liken that to navigating white on white on white forever.

 

While people sleep nobody here can see what I see.

 

The fluorescent lights make us look sickly.

 

If I were to participate in a club where we all looked out for one another

 

I would recommend him as a member.

 

Moving around as unfamiliar goods there would be much to work on.

 

We would be allowed to sigh over the smallest things.




Leslie Seldin

levelheaded: To Being This Human

 

Leslie Seldin’s poem is a meditation on being human, flowing from strong to subtle moments, each holding its own, without a need for stanzas. The clear grammar provides a succinct delivery of sentences, each a single line, ending decisively and consistently with a period.

 

Some lines leave lots of room for interpretation, as in “I have a maternal moment on the sidewalk.” Maybe the baby is kicking. Maybe a child is thought of, or maybe an instinct is awakened. Other moments are more philosophical, as in “While people sleep nobody here can see what I see.” This tells us that being surrounded by others’ weakened perception somehow sharpens our own.

 

The most revealing (though still subtle) section is made of the two lines about the brother: “My brother is inside my head. / I don’t speak of him very often except for now.” The speaker resurrects her brother while stating such doing (through thought) is rare. We wonder why the brother isn’t regularly spoken of, and how the poem as a whole relates to him (especially the last four lines). Tragic circumstances, we’d guess.

 

As we travel through those lines our trust in the voice grows and grows, to a point where we can read slower, take a detour with each line and spend a moment thinking for ourselves before we go back to read the next. There’s more to process the more we continue, because we become aware of the possibilities and the unknowns. Just like the poem states, “Moving around as unfamiliar goods there would be much to work on.”

 

Indeed we keep on working, look at the “smallest things,” nod when they resonate.

 

 

– The Editors