Notes About The Poem
*reference Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Rime and Reason I Shall Not
Alone, alone, all, all alone
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Rime and Reason I Shall Not
Rime and reason I shall not wonder about,
but the wonders of the sea and its wandering.
I zip in quickly, unzip these Coleridge lines.
I’m all alone as I wander and wonder about.
How pitiable we are as we seek pity,
a pittance of our inside-outs, our doubts.
A whirlwind of living dances about,
in one’s unparalleled walkabout.
All alone in the fog - how does no one else
fathom-see the endless waves of gravity.
Like a lasso-chain about one’s ankles,
heart, lips, mind, emotions; the mourner’s trip.
After, all the battles of cancer are history,
I’m hanging onto Queequeg’s coffin,*
that ebbs in things gone by and flows
with tears that steer my little lost ship,
Rime and reason shared, a lot, and rocks
the boat. Inevitability of solitude in one’s thoughts.
Your hand grips the phone to reach out
but ultimately you phantom-float, and drift.
Sam says “never a saint took pity on…”
The answers are not found. You have to beat
the imagery to death. You end up back in the room
more than the hospice worker, where walls are bright.
The waves close in. Its eyes blank stare
and circle about. You find the smallest details
and ruminate as family fill in the blanks.
You pick each herring up, as if their death’s your fault.
Others take credit for what you know you did
and you question and doubt what you perceive.
All alone on the mourner’s island. It’s not pretty.
But you’ve joined the club, your only solace.
When you’ve picked the scene to death,
like a bird eats his prey, you leave it all,
all alone. The memories are stored away.
Those memories, real or imagined.
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