Weight of the world

Don't you go about your day differently these days? I know I do.

I wake up with the first thought--so THIS IS THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD I've always heard about, first from my grandmother, then from my mother, then Uncle Charles and Aunt Camille, good people who sighed frequently, people who'd been through great depressions and world wars and still managed to lead positive lives.

Now our lives test positive, or negative.

Once I've finally risen from my first thought--that I'm now indeed living in the midst of the weight of the world--I go to the closet and pick out a book of poetry from my carefully curated 40-year collection, always finding something I can wear for the rest of the day.

I'm so proud of poetry I could cry.

Poetry protects me; to read a poem first thing in the morning is like jumping into my own customized hazmat suit that not only keeps out the evil spirits that could kill me but also lets in the kind of light that heals. 

Poets I can recommend include John Keats, W.S. diPiero, Tom Hennen, Montale the Italian, and the late Bill Knott whose book of 'comic poems' 1969-1999* I find especially sustaining these days. A Knott poem--he also wrote under the name Saint Geraud, a person who he claimed lived from 1940-1966--is always bracing, like a splash of aftershave before shaving:

Ancient Measures

As much as someone could plow in one day

They called an acre;

As much as a person could die in one instant

A lifetime--

Poetry quite naturally segues to bread, as naturally as the leaves to the tree in Keats' poetry. I'm eating a lot of bread these days, a lot more bread than I ate before the coronavirus. I've always liked bread but certain health officials said bread wasn't good for me, so I'd cut way back. When I'd make a sandwich I'd always make an open-faced sandwich; I'd only eat one piece of toast for breakfast, and so on. Now I'm thinking bread is the best thing I can eat, bread's a real fighter, bread's been through a lot, the weight of the world has always been imposed upon bread from the very beginning. Bread's had it good and bread's been through the tough times too, bread is a real survivor.

I'm casting my lot with bread and poetry, and the weight of the world.

*Laugh At The End Of The World" Collected Comic Poems 1969-1999. Bill Knott. Boa Editions LImited, 2000.