Mimus Polyglottus

Every Thought...

Week 10: Mimus Polyglottus

Another simple prayer poem, fully realizing the month my father died and the month my brother first learned of a tumor inside his head. But March, more than Eliot’s April, even before the roots are stirred, is also when life begins.

03/04:

Introduction To Mimus Polyglottus

Mimus Polyglottus, the Northern Mockingbird,
is a bird that likes to hear the songs of the birds around it
and celebrate them, make them a part of its own song,

much like a poet does: I learned that from Walt Whitman,
through his own mockingbird poem,
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,
in which he realized his primal purpose as a poet
was to keep alive the songs that came before him.

It's a lesson that keeps coming back to me,
through poetry, through nature,
and by people I pass along the way.


03/05:

Sunday's Coming

Old man barely middle aged
Once predicted his demise
Or at least the timing.  Time
Flies.  I’m feeling parsley saged
Afraid of death and otherwise
Out of breath with hills to climb
Over of my own, the time
Ominously rising.  Old
Man said No to nursing homes
Or planning for retirement
Often said Don’t worry Son
I’ll work until my day is done
But home is heaven and I can’t
Wait around for it to come.


03/06:

Generations, Part 1

I saw myself today.
Not a mirror image of who I am,
not the left to my right,
nothing so ordinary as that.
I saw a spitting image, a living clone,
a reflection refusing to face me,
my likeness walking away.
I saw this from a distance of many years,
but there I was.

“Hey,” I cried, hoping to connect,
but I did not turn around,
and I saw myself pretending not to hear.
“Hey, listen!” I tried again,
but I know it was pointless:
I am, after all, a stubborn man;
but I am a persistent man, too.
I always have been.
I continued: “Listen to me!”
And I continued, not saying a word.

I’d like to think the years have given me
an advantage, that time is good for something,
wisdom, maybe, or experience.
But as I started chasing after myself
—“Hey! Don’t walk away from me!”—
I realized I was not as fast as I used to be.
The years have aged me and slowed me down.
I do not have the energy I used to have.
I am no longer eleven years old,
nor twenty one, nor thirty one.

I am an age I never thought I would be
seeing myself now as I had forgotten I once was.
Once more I shouted: “Hey!  Wait!”
But my image, my clone, my self
was even further away now, and where
for a moment my image would not listen,
now it could not hear.
There was no longer a refusal to turn around;
there was no reason.
Oh, stubborn boy, persistent man!
You who will not listen to the voice of experience,
the wisdom of years,
you who will outpace the ages,
give me time!  Hear my call!
But of course, not only could I not hear myself,
I never saw myself: my back was turned;
there was no recognition the other way.

I am not who I used to be,
but more than this: I was not yet
who I have become: I could not see,
and it was impossible to see myself
in that old man calling out to me,
and I did not hear, or if I heard,
it made no particular impression.
And yet today, the other way,

the impression is indelible.
There I was!
That was me!
If only I could have seen myself
looking back at me.
If only I could hear myself
calling desperately.


03/07:

Skinny

“Your boy,” they said, “is skinny like your dad.”
I nodded and considered images
Of my old man from twenty years ago
When he was my age.  Now I’m his,
And here’s this boy mixed up in time with me,
Skinny as a ghost resurrected
Making someone think of someone he
Had never known.  “Like who?” he asked,
“Who am I like?”  And everybody smiled
And started telling stories of a man
Who used to be.  “But not like me,” I said,
“Skinny skipped a generation,”
Leaving me with all these memories
Of looking at a man as old as the hills
And this reality: my little boy
As young as I had ever been,
Now looking up at me with skinny eyes.


03/08:

Generations, Continued

So now I am a father.
The generation behind me is
fading and a newer generation
is overshadowing mine.  They,
my son and my daughter, will say
that mine is the generation fading fast,
that my parents, my living mother
and the memory of my father, are simply
extensions of the same generation:
we are the old, they are the now;
our light fades, theirs is just starting
to shine brightly.

And now I am a father,
repeating myself it seems, falling
into old habits.  I am the one
who will soon, sooner than anyone
expects, become a memory.  I am
the one, too, who will suffer
the indignities of aging:
if not a slow death, at least
the mirror of mortality, and if not
a drawn out suffering, still
they will see me fade.  And I will be
the one who, all too soon, will meet their
mates and bless their marriages and
watch them, oh so quickly, begin
yet another generation.  I will remain
the old, but they will relinquish
their position as the new and they
will join me as a watchful generation,
slowly fading.

I won’t say I can’t wait,
because I’d rather they stay
the now generation for as
long as they can.  My daughter,
age fourteen, gets her driver’s permit
next year already, and I will come to
terms with that —but not so quickly,
no more, let her stay a little girl
who happens to know how to drive.
And my son, age eleven, is starting
to notice the girls his age, and I can
accept that too — but stay there, son,
go no farther for a while.  Be the
now generation for as long as you can,
yet be aware that infatuation will
only lead to your fading, and as for
cars, daughter, they will get you
nowhere.  Look at me, see
for yourselves.

But of course neither son nor
daughter can see me as anything
but a father.  I have always been
a part of their world but never
a part of their now.  And I can
accept this too.  Just let me remain,
as I should be when they are
eleven and fourteen, still being aware,
to some degree anyway, of their now.
And let them see me, as they should
at their ages, as something of
a constant; it is not yet time for me
to fade.


03/09:

Mimus Polyglotus

For I, that was a child, 
my tongue’s use sleeping, 
now I have heard you, 
Now in a moment 
I know what I am for, 
   I awake

             — Walt Whitman

A man before a million souls to me
Suggested through his sorrow he could smile
Because the one he lost had taught him well
Of celebrating death.  How can that be?
But how he didn’t say, nor did I see
Immediately that within his smile
He had a million tales of life to tell
As one who lived to tell and told to me.
A single face within a passing crowd
Who sings of moonlight on a distant shore
Can echo joy and pain, and in each word
Can radiate a purpose and a creed.
Here, then, the mourning soul with smiles to bear
And hear one who recalls a mockingbird.

My father’s pastor in another time
Spoke to his congregation: “Celebrate
The life well lived that walks through heaven’s gate
And leaves a lasting trail of footprints.”  I’m
Still resonating to the funeral chimes
And eulogies and yet I hesitate
To smile at death; I stand before a gate
That begs a deeper reason for the rhyme.
Prosaically: It’s hard to celebrate
The end of things, and one that is no more
Is nothing but a fading memory;
But even here the moon and waters meet
And waves give testimony to the shore,
And the mockingbird begins to sing to me...

A poet in the evening of his youth
Found revelations in a song he heard
Along Manhattan’s autumn shores: a bird
Delivering translations of the truth,
Repeating what the waves had left him with
Forever, what the boy had always heard
But never understood, a single word
Unveiled within a moonlit whisper: Death.
He called it strong, delicious, steady, sweet,
Superior and final, then he swore
To conquer it and begged for more of it,
And in its wake he knew what he was for
And in its power he pledged to celebrate,
To sing eternally and evermore.


03/10:

Moleskin 2.2: I Am Named

From day one, perhaps in the first moments after birth, I was given a name that I was regularly, determinedly called: Jonathan Andrew Vold.  The family name, from my father’s side, was taken from Lake Lisavold southwest of Trondheim, Norway, assumed by my grandfather John O. Vold. He decided propitiously, coming here alone at a relatively young age, that he would leave his family name, Slupphaug, behind. The middle name, from my mother’s side, was the common name of my mother’s maternal grandfather Andrias Loftness, the youngest of my great great grandfather Gregorius’s twelve children and the only one born in America. The first name, Jonathan, means gift from God, probably preconceived but fitting to how the doctor was able to unwrap the umbilical cord from around my neck in those first seconds of life. Or so I am told.