In the Beginning

by Howard J Kogan

 

In the beginning seems like a good way to start a poem

it has a familiar ring, a vague profundity, an authoritative tone.

Of course, what follows matters,

in the beginning of the third inning lacks the gravitas of

in the beginning God created …

which reminds me of … in the beginning was the word,

an idea poets like;

that’s the Apostle John talking

about God’s word becoming flesh.

 

It’s a trick we keep trying to learn,

but until we do, we’re sentenced

to use words to make sense of our lives,

and keep us from feeling alone and unknown.

It’s difficult talking about words with words

but what else do we have?

 

Anyway, it’s about time someone walked into the room

and noticed the white lotus blossom encircled

by orange and blue koi, each koi a single brush stroke

practiced for years so it appears effortless.

 

Or we can stand at the edge of a high cliff

looking down into a painted canyon watching

a paint stallion galloping with his harem.

A vulture, riding a column of warm air,

lifts above the rim and eyes us,

its head is the color of meat.

Or we can watch a gazelle being chased

by an unchaste lioness with cubs to feed.

 

Let’s ask Mother Teresa to pray for them,

she’s standing there in the shade

fingering her rosary beads

laughing and whispering with Princess Diana.

They’re as real as the lion cubs you see

waiting quietly in the shade of an Acacia tree.

 

Each … a word in a poem,

in a world we’re creating together.

 

Though this poem is not about flowers,

horses, lions, gazelles or Mother Teresa.

They’re only words that glide in and out of the poem

like Olympic skaters, who are poets themselves

inscribing their poems on the ice while judges wait for them

to execute the required double axel and follow it with a spin.

Spinning faster and faster until they’re a blur

bent on drilling themselves into the ice,

which they would do if this were a cartoon,

but it’s all words, no pictures.

The pictures are yours.

You’re the only one who knows

if the skater is a man or a woman,

how tall they are, the color of their hair,

or whether they landed that double axel.

 

Eventually the skater stops spinning,

masks their face in a practiced smile

and skates backward around the rink

gracefully acknowledging the applause of fans.

Now the skater steps off the ice into the arms of

a Russian trainer, one look and you know she’s KGB.

 

She wears a silver fox coat, bears little resemblance

to Mother Teresa though she might be the lioness

and the skater the gazelle or be the gazelle

and the party apparatchiks the lioness,

or it’s something else entirely.

 

That’s the problem with words,

they can deceive as easily as inform.

 

Truth is beauty,

but lies are always dressed to kill.

 

Or perhaps the poem stems from seeing a woman

wearing a lotus blossom kerchief with a koi border,

like the one mother wore after chemo.

So thin she could have been in a photograph

of a concentration camp, a photograph

because that’s as close as the word can get to life.

 

That’s the sort of poem we’re writing,

complex, even confusing, and one that inevitably fails.  

Because words can only carry you so far,

the possibilities are endless, but in the end 

only one possibility can be lived.

 

In the beginning 

was the word,

in the end will be a silence

that speaks with an eloquence

words can only envy.

~

Howard J Kogan is a retired psychotherapist and former resident of the Capital District who now lives in Ashland, MA.  His books of poetry, Indian Summer, A Chill in the Air and Before I Forget are available from the publisher, SquareCirclePress.com, your independent bookstore or Amazon.