Brain Food #702
What is already there
Thoughts of the day
Dawn Revisited was written by American poet Rita Dove in 1999, at the end of a century and millennium.
It feels appropriate to share it during the humble beginnings of a new year, especially because it links so spectacularly to some of the themes I have been exploring this week. Similar to what Pauline Oliveros suggests in her notes, it feels as if Dove is asking us, ‘What are you waiting for?’ Echoing the need to look back in order to look forward, she writes, “If you don’t look back, the future never happens.”
It is easy to forget just how much we already have, and how much more we can do and experience with what is already available. By revisiting Dawn, Dove invites us to look at and appreciate what is already there with a fresh pair of eyes.
Dawn Revisited by Rita Dove Imagine you wake up with a second chance: The blue jay hawks his pretty wares and the oak still stands, spreading glorious shade. If you don't look back, the future never happens. How good to rise in sunlight, in the prodigal smell of biscuits - eggs and sausage on the grill. The whole sky is yours to write on, blown open to a blank page. Come on, shake a leg! You'll never know who's down there, frying those eggs, if you don't get up and see.
“I’ve always felt that if a poem doesn’t make you feel like you are about to be run out of town if you publish this, then you haven’t dared enough. Right?
I think any well-adjusted person has a whole arsenal of defense mechanisms in order to function in life. If you’re going to be writing—to push past that, to discover something new, to discover what actually is behind everything—you’ve got to peel a layer off.”
Dove, in an interview with Guernica magazine.
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