Reverie to Duty (Taps)
There’s a certain sequence of notes, not exactly a scale–let’s say “Taps”–that resonates in chords in the striving soul.
One harmonic sounds in sadness. Maybe, even, shuddering. We can’t help but think of endings–
Another harmonic sounds (if we’re lucky) in satisfaction, and another – the third tone of the chord–as thrill: the thrill of fitting into a tradition, like the first wearing of white gloves, first billfold in back pocket.
But tonight I think of Duty, and that, in turn, brings up fried fish–the story of the daughter who watches her mother, throughout her childhood, cutting off the two curled edges of a fillet–like so, like so—-before committing it to the frying pan.
The daughter then teaches her own daughters, that–like so, like so–they must cut off the ends of all fish before cooking; that this is the proper way to cook fish; that they are women who cook fish in this proper way.
Years later–when the daughter sits beside her mother (now grandmother, maybe even great)–knitting perhaps, or, more likely, bemoaning the decline of current days, and asks how this tradition was handed down, the mother/grandmother pauses, thinks, and explains that she just always had a very small frying pan.
Duty, traditional duty–we like to think of it as an obligation owed to nothing but an undersized skillet.
But now I hear the harmonics of Taps again–and fear, listening, that its sombre notes mean the loss of light and of all light’s twists and turns, those rainbows we want to pursue, be.
Still, one tends to child, parent, damaged child, damaged parent, person who feels like child, parent or just damaged–a fish out of water–
One tends also to things—-job, house, list–that feel a bit more like the squared-off fillet–
All I can tell myself is that rainbows can be found on fish too, if you look carefully–
Even fillets once had them–
And that, in the mind, there are surely all kinds of scales to be seen, seen through, weighed, balanced, listened to–
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Because this is April, National Poetry Month, I am calling the above a prose poem and also my 23rd poem this month. (For some reason, I seem to feel that it’s my duty to write a new poem every day this month, so at this point, I am calling almost everything I write a poem!) Thanks for your patience!
I am also linking this poem to dVerse Poets Pub’s Open Link Night and to Imperfect Prose, both very supportive sites full of interesting writers. Check them out!
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