Red Letter Poem #208

  The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #208

 

 

 

 

 

Because once it was  

 

 

 

always they are there    in the bath

together     as if content

 

he with his head by the tap

she at the other end    their bodies relaxed

 

side by side    toward and against 

each other

 

his penis her breasts   lightly lifted 

by the water

 

and one or another of us three children

coming in and out

 

peering at them

 

 

 

                             ––Hilary Sallick

 

 

My wife––less averse to change than I am––frequently updates the wallpaper photo on her cell phone: while always featuring our grandson, George, the images have steadily progressed from his adorable infant snapshots through the “big boy” soon-to-be-eight-year-old crouching here on a tree limb above a river.  My phone, on the other hand, still comes to life to reveal my very favorite photograph of George: he is only two, held secure in his father’s embrace, while his own tiny arm leans against the mammoth glass wall at the Aquarium, sea creatures drifting past.  It’s the look on his face that simply melts my heart: the very embodiment of childlike wonder.  Every one of us spent years in that same Edenic state.  Most, having exited, make only rare return visits; some resolutely-adult individuals refuse even a backward glance.  To my mind, that is one of the chief purposes of poetry and art: to help us experience our lives again with innocent eyes (or as unfettered a perspective as we can manage.)  It reminds me of first seeing Marc Chagall’s ‘blue fiddler’ hovering above his village rooftops; or Saturday morning cartoons back in the Fifties, where heroic mice fly and mischievous woodpeckers cavort; or Kenneth Patchen’s ‘painted poems’ created with what appears to be a five-year-old’s bravura.  One taste of such art, and the years melt away.  Innocence contains a kind of elusive wisdom, the Zen philosopher Shunryu Suzuki reminds us: "In the Beginner's Mind there are many possibilities; but in the expert's, few."

 

Yet make no mistake, I am not arguing that creations such as these are artless––just the opposite.  It takes a good deal of skill to not only reclaim that ingenuous vision but to transform it into words or colors or gestures that have the power to ease us out from our grown-up travail and into the unencumbered world.  It is what’s at the heart of Hilary Sallick’s new poem: childhood before knowledge, the Garden prior to the Fall––before the need for the fig leaf, when we could walk into the brazen day without a hint of trepidation.  It’s not until the closing lines––when we read “us three children” ––that we’re entirely certain who has wandered into this bathroom scene.  And the presence of the young siblings identifies that couple in the sudsy tub as their parents, who are so utterly at ease––with their offspring, their own bodies––they seem hardly to notice the intrusion.  Yet that glimpse through innocent eyes has remained with Hilary for decades and conjures a family portrait that never mentions love but is infused with it everywhere.  The title slides right into the body of the poem and sets up the central question of the piece: because this once was true, might it be perpetually?  Weren’t you entranced by the image of the couple nestled together: “their bodies relaxed// side by side    toward and against/ each other”––those caesuras and airy stanzas cushioning each image like soap bubbles.  I loved how, sonically, “toward and against” quietly echoes “his penis her breasts” (not even a modest comma to separate them); and the unassuming genitalia are “lightly lifted/ by the water” with an ease Chagall himself would have admired.  Those children are free to enter and leave that idyllic moment––for the afternoon, for the remainder of their lives.

 

Hilary Sallick’s second full-length collection, love is a shore, appeared from Lily Poetry Review Books in 2023 and is long-listed for a Massachusetts Book Award.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a host of fine journals including Notre Dame Review, Permafrost, Potomac Review, and Ibbetson Street; they possess an unassuming grace and quiet emotionality that’s quite appealing.  A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she lives and works in Somerville, MA, and serves on the Board of the New England Poetry Club, one of the nation’s oldest literary associations.  Hilary’s piece brought to mind William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience which portray how the blank slates of human minds are inscribed with, permanently altered by contact with the world.  Her text is just such a song of our original innocence; but it gains in heft because we can’t help remembering all that must follow.

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

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* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner