I came across this provocative poem today by Lisel Mueller. It reminded me life is less about certainty and more about uncertainty. Today, I find beauty and wisdom in the uncertainty that I refused to acknowledge in my youth. Then, I desired an impossible certainty in life I could not be promised. When I sat down and wrote today and post, I was certain it would be a one of my poems, but this one spoke to me more clearly. It found a space to enter my world that I would not allow for in my youthful days. In uncertainty, questions are unanswered and answers have a hazy quality similar to haloes around streetlights in Paris. What does the future hold? What a beautiful question which is only be answered moment by moment.
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
So beautiful, and yes, I must dust!
It is and I must as well occasionally or do laundry.
Oh, yes, this is a beautiful poem celebrating the change we experience as we age. Wonderful post.
Thank you Pat. It is interesting how life comes more into focus when it is out of focus as a retrospective.
Paradoxically, uncertainty is the only thing we can be certain of in life! xoM
That is profound Margarita. It is like the hole in the whole makes life complete. Mystery is OK.
Thought you would appreciate this http://youtu.be/d7AZeRIJvN0 also great article
Thank you. It is interesting that it was all female at the beginning. I wonder what that says about us guys and our willingness to take a risk? And, then one male comes out.
🙂
That was the Principal if you listen closely…so it was good that he finally did
I missed that when I watched it this morning.
This reminds me of the story I heard about James Thurber. His apartment overlooked Central Park in New York and as he looked out his window one afternoon he noticed something and called his wife to the window. “Look at that lovely stone lion they’ve put in the park. I swear it wasn’t there yesterday. It’s beautiful.” His wife looked, and responded, “Put your spectacles on James. It’s just a crumpled brown paper bag.” Thurber stopped wearing his spectacles.
That is a great story. I am siting and smiling now. It explains the creativity of some people completely. I would much rather see the lion than the crumpled bag too.
~the world is flux and light becomes what it touches~ love this!
There are beautifully provocative lines in this poem.
Oh Ivon, this is glorious – thank you
You are welcome Valerie.
What a great piece. I love talking in personas. It gives one a flexibility to put into mouths what were on surmises and make them live.>KB
Thank you for the comment.
Truth seeker that I am, your intro resonated and reminded me as I read the poem that the challenges of youth for many of us, are the thick crusty filters that obstruct our view and access to the truth that we more readily see in the later season of our lives. Lovely post.
I agree. Much of our willingness to accept uncertainty is done later in life and we are more comfortable with it. At least I am, I think.
Wonderful poem Ivon
Thank you David.
I love this poem Ivon. The world is in flux, constantly changing as we daily grow old in it.
It is the impermanence of life that wraps us in a mystery and makes life whole.