Of course, perfection is not something any human can attain. We're all inherently flawed.
Sharon Olds writes about her "perfect" dad . . .
The Ideal Father
by: Sharon Olds
When I dream you, Dad, you come into the dream
clean, farouche, gesundheit, feral
fresh face, physically exact--
the ideal, the schemata, the blueprint, no mark of
pain. You're perfect as a textbook example:
your hair like a definition of hair,
the bulb with its pith which contains a little air,
the root, the spear of horny substance, the
mouth of the follicle, the filament which forms the
coat of the mammal, the way the sheath
glistens where the shaft opens its oil to the light;
and your skin, the layers of the epidermis like
clear water through which we see the
subcutaneous fat, its pearls
swimming in cross-section; and your teeth, their
pork-white ceilings, enamel crowns,
pulp hollows, necks and roots like
squids' legs, deep in the gum--not a
cavity, no whiff of rot; and your
body flawless, pink carnation
boutonniéres of the nipples, and your sex
stiffening in textbook time,
record time, everything about you
exemplary. Where is the one who threw up?
The one who passed out, the one who would not
speak for a week, slapped the glasses off a
small girl's face, bloodied his head and
sank through the water? I think he is dead.
I think the ideal father would hardly
let such a man live. After all he has
daughters to protect, laying his perfect
body over their sleep all night long.
Olds' father was by no means ideal in any way. She dreams up her own version of a perfect father, right down to the part in his hair. But this poem is a tale of two fathers--one who lays his perfect body over his daughters' sleep to protect them from harm, and one who slaps a small girl's face so hard that her glasses go flying.
Nothing about today was perfect or ideal. I had big plans of what I wanted to accomplish, but, as often happens, I wasn't able to finish my to-do list. I do this to myself all the time, and I end up going to bed, feeling like a failure.
Here's my litany of deficiencies tonight:
- I'm not a perfect father.
- I'm not a perfect husband.
- I'm not a perfect friend.
- I'm not a perfect teacher.
- I'm not a perfect musician.
- I'm not a perfect poet.
- I'm not a perfect Christian.
For each of these bullet points, I could provide 100 examples of my mistakes and fuckups. But my point is simply that I am not perfect. In fact, I may be the least perfect person I know, and I've known quite a few assholes. But I try hard, every day, to do what's right. And really, that's all anybody can do.
Here is one thing I did right today: I led an online poetry workshop, wrote shitty poems, and made some people laugh. Times are little tough right now in the United States, so laughter is a real gift.
Saint Marty wrote a poem today about the perfection of snow, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Write a poem that begins with a very large image, such as the universe at night, Earth, a country, an ocean, Jupiter, a continent, a cargo ship, or some other gargantuan object. Then, throughout your poem, have each image following become smaller than the previous one. Write until you arrive at the tiniest of images, and end your poem there.
Snow
by: Martin Achatz
This morning the world was snow,
everything white and cold and blinding,
even the air, each breath a blizzard.
A pine in my backyard, all frilled
with snowy lace, stands like a tall
girl at a high school Yule Ball,
waiting to be asked to dance, ruby
winter berries flashing in her needles.
A hare twitches at the tree's knuckled
roots, haunches wound tight in case
I get too close. But I stay still, try
to slow my lungs and heart until
they move at the speed of a snowflake
drifting from the heavens, down, down,
a tiny cathedral of ice searching
for the perfect place to praise the ground.
No comments:
Post a Comment