from Startles

She’d been praying as she drove by, she said. Not cell phone distraction, but god’s own. I read an article this morning on attention as “predatory.” We become prey, as he (yes, he) devours us. The author argues that attention is usually conceived of as solitary; I suggest otherwise.

The cult is false friend to compassion. It closes what is opened otherwise. The woman in the cemetery comes nearly every day to lie on her son’s grave. Grieving is her attention to that patch of earth, a blue dinosaur in brown lei standing beside a typed prayer, a white rosary. I witness her grief from the road with my dog.

To witness might be to prey upon, I suppose. Effective witness is rare, like royal jewels, and can be stolen in broad daylight, if you bring the laddered truck. When nothing comes of it, keep at it. The woman looks at me with tears in her eyes and smiles. The other day I left her alone under her black umbrella set against the sun.

In a poem, her tears would be jewels. According to the article, I might be stealing them. To write about them takes, and then offers, like a palm over the heart, or the palm over my stained white umbrella. What does the language see in us? Does it take the words we write and reorder them, making true statements false?

If I take her story, am I thief or amanuensis? If I offer her story up, have I pawned it, or left it on a doorstep like a foundling? To the extent that her story becomes mine by way of attention, I am both creatures, prey and praying for. If I breathe in her hurt, I take what she would not offer me, and breathe it out where she cannot see it. In my depression, mere politeness seemed the utmost of care.

Both depression and happiness are true, even in the same container. Put it on a ship and send it to sea. Or talk about it as a shaggy dog story. Daniel told me one that ended with “soldiers in your cup.” We live on the hinge of the pun, the turn between truisms, the balance born of counterweight, a sometimes happy accident.