Sunday, August 17, 2014

Indian Summer Foretold

Days before Indian Summer drag like Andrei Tarkovsky films,
and, if you’ve seen them, you know they more than drag—they
demand a dreamlike going-there, no turning back: from Ivan’s
non-Childhood to Nostalgia’s smoldering wick.  They troll what
freedom might have spent. They toll some Rublev bells untold.

And, growing somewhat old, I gather more in Indian Summers
than ever hoped before. My children speed their step as August
reaps whatever store—they’re in it more for the shine and rut
that Autumn brings, the září and řijen that beckons fawns to be
young bucks and does. So the story goes: youth re-ruts the old.


The European Athletic Championships run while I think it out:
a race that pits a Russian and Ukrainian seems naturally remiss.
Black Panther punch one and another!—you’re doing it no less
in facebook wars… But these young athletes have much more in
mind than redressing petty politics, opting for some fools’ gold.

Their parents both saw Tarkovsky films, for instance, Sacrifice,
and now, in days before the summer ends, a hope would be that
all can see we’ve come too far for cold war land grabs and dog-
days’ growl for veranda scrawl symposia—we all must ruminate
the line between some entitled sense of being….and being bold.


To my mind, there’s little choice. The world has falsely thrived
on lack of ethical sacrifice. Those who’ve had a lot in life may be
a mewling sort: their meat has safely come from some provide,
and ‘old dogs/new tricks’ may not translate far and wide. To the
point, we purchase souls that are probably far from being sold.

And there the poem can end. Who really cares, after all, where
poems begin and end? Who understands where Indian Summer
days, if they have a feigning chance to (in our immigrant minds)
begin? Tarkovsky—Russian Swede, Italian eye-piece for days in
dancing need—pell-mell rounds up sheep to field a better fold.


And that is where any Indian Summer (in advance) should go—
Leave the predisposed and concentrate, in temperance, to that
which needs a better fold. There’s no source here but the Gospel
Luke: ‘Physician, heal thyself’—the tautology upends itself—so
we’ll fall to autumn leaves that jockey not for soil predisposed,

and rather fall as Luke and others may not have easily foretold.
Much the point of Jesus’ ministry is being in a place where earth
conditions are both at hand and not-to-be-believed: who’d see
a blind man gaining sight with a paste of mud? Or Lazarus rising
arbitrarily? No one would see. And thereby we are humbly told.


And so my Indian Summer, in advance, is adequately foretold.

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