POEM: TIDES

Tides

Freedom’s dark ocean

spilled across the land,

wetting all the buttercups

and muddying the sand.

A flower pot was overturned,

(Cracked too I will admit!)

The treasures of an earthly hold

no longer meant for it.

And apples from an absent bowl

tumbled to the ground.

All were scattered by the tide,

all save one were found.

Still, Moth beat her wings to dry,

so impatient with delays!

While Spider kicked a shining drop

from his web of yesterdays.

Only Beetle bathing in a thimble pool

was cheerier, they say.

His world of scuttling round-about

seemed very far away.

But if there’s wonder, it’s for those

who here come the day around

to see such things that might have been,

not what is to be found.

WHEN I PUT POEMS ONTO THIS BLOG I generally do so at random. I just turn over a few of the dusty pages, trying not to tear any, until one hits my fancy, or slaps me on the side of the head with a wet fish. This one did neither, but the opening line is one of my favourite: “freedom’s dark ocean”. It’s evocative, mysterious and leaves to the imagination a number of interpretations. It sets the tone for the rest of the poem, and I like to look back on some of the things I’ve written and try to decide whether they’re of interest to anyone but me, or if they should be shoved in my desk drawer along with my moth eaten novel manuscript. I like to examine some of the ideas and images that have oozed from my brain pan over the years. (Why do I have the image of a cat barfing up a line of fur balls on the kitchen floor?) So here goes:
The opening image suggests some sort of tidal wave event has just occurred (and I think I wrote this shortly after the terrible boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 that killed more than 230,000 people), yet only the buttercups are wet and the sand has been muddied. So whatever has happened is on the scale of the minuscule—flowers, insects, a spider’s web, apples fallen from a bowl. I’m sure I had the Robert Frost's “Range-finding” in mind, and I’ll include it at the end of this post.

Interestingly, the speaker seems to consider the breaking of a flower pot is a more serious event than the other consequences of the flood, suggesting our inevitable anthropocentric bias. (Hey, I wrote it, so I guess I'm human.) The poem seems to be more or less equally divided between the human and the insects, though humans do not make an appearance. Nevertheless, it is also a fable about the insects affected by what has occurred; to them a heavy rainfall might be like a tsunami. How can we ever know what the other creatures we share this world with think and feel after their own fashion? Though I note a recent news story about a killer whale (such misnomer for this magnificent creature) swimming off Vancouver Island that carried her dead newborn calf with her for days in what can only be described as an act of mourning, so there may be much we share in common with all these other carbon-based lifeforms around us, and that we tend to ignore on our march through life. 

     The broken flower pot the speaker mentions will no longer hold the “earthly treasures”; in fact, those treasures are no longer meant to be placed in the pot. Why? What has changed? The speaker continues with an observation of fallen apples have been washed away by a “tide” save for one. Is this a reference to Eve’s apple? One has been “found”. By whom? Thus far, there are no direct references to people. A bowl has been swept away by the event, or was it “absent” to begin with? Was it absent in the sense that it was never meant to hold the apples in the first place?

     Next, the speaker observes the insects as they recover or regroup from the waters. Both Moth and Spider work to repair themselves and their habitat. They are industrious and serious and want to get back to business as usual. The comic image of Beetle is a fav of mine. Beetle seems to be taking advantage of the changed landscape by swimming about in his miniature pool, enjoying himself, and for the moment, until presumably the land dries, he does not feel the need to resume his previous activity of “scuttling about”. As well, the speaker indicates that Beetle was “cheerier” than his compatriots, but the speaker knows this because someone has told them. Who? The other insects? The speaker is in communication with someone.

     I thought of how landscape changes over time, of how, say, a roadside picnic area might look a hundred or a thousand years from now. That was, in part, the image I had of these folk who may come upon the scene of the insects and their flooded field—a roadside picnic area where there are always a lot of insects! That there are images from the human world (the flower pot and bowl, Beetle's "thimble" pool of water) suggests our interconnectedness with the non-human.

     The final stanza is concerned with those that come upon the scene. The speaker finds their mindset a "wonder" (and there seems to be a fair number who come "the day around"). What will these newcomers see? What will they consider important? Will they see things that are changed as a result of "freedom’s" tide, or will they keep to their same way of thinking? Will they even be aware of the changes? Will they try to impose the past upon the present? Or will they accept the new and go for a dip in the pool? 

Cheers, Jake.

Range-finding

By Robert Frost (pub. 1916)

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung

And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest

Before it stained a single human breast.

The stricken flower bent double and so hung.

And still the bird revisited her young.

A butterfly its fall had dispossessed

A moment sought in air his flower of rest,

Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.

On the bare upland pasture there had spread

O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread

And straining cables wet with silver dew.

A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.

The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,

But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

I’ll also include a vid that has the work of the brilliant American cartoonist Robert Crumb, as he imagines a single plot of land as it changes over time, and  Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” is the perfect musical accompaniment. [Thanks YouTube!]