I Call, You Respond

 

A Guest Series Curated by Nicole Rollender. Intro to project here.

 

Call and Response: “The Days”

The late, great Jon Anderson used poetry as a vehicle for stark (and possibly uncomfortable) self-reckoning: “My prime motive for writing is self-confrontation, and I find poems the best way to employ language to do this. My poetry isn’t for everyone. It’s for people like myself who want to contend with themselves. I think of my poems as intimate conversations with close friends, to whom I’m not afraid to reveal my vulnerabilities and loneliness.” The poem, “The Days” comes from In Sepia, which was Anderson’s third book of poems. His poetry is spare and controlled – but movingly precise in emotion and observation.

 

The Days

All day I bear myself to such reward:
I close my eyes, I can’t sleep,
The trees are whispering flat as water.

My friends’ grayed faces
Do not alter with the weather anymore.
We sit by a stove & talk.
We suffer the terrible news.

Into a world made over & over
You rise each day,
You remember,
& something goes wrong.

God, if I had a wish, I swear
I wouldn’t know what to spend it on.

 

RESPONSE #4: by Katie Shenk Hadjolian

My father died of early-onset Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago. He was lost long before he died. The hopelessness I felt upon my first read of Jon Anderson’s poem reminded me of that and combined with thoughts of recent life events and my new fascination with a particular TV show. Then, this came out.

 

The Everyday Apocalypse

That moment
The one just as I wake, when everything is gone
Is that what it was like for my father?
Did he spend his nights in the rich and comforting world of memory and dreams
Eyes opening to the empty horror of not knowing who he was
What
Where
When.
Why?

Dad’s life was gone in a whisper
One heard only in retrospect, when the next breath didn’t come
The quiet theft, my call to action.
Caller said: Make yourself rich.
How? I asked.
Caller said: Live your life.
See ugly babies and fireflies in the corn.
Hear sirens and birdsong.
Feel slaps in the face and the softness of your lover’s bare skin.
Taste spoiled milk and sweetest honey.
Learn the hard way when to spare the rod.
You have a chance.
Take it.
Take it.

***

Katie Shenk Hadjolian lives in Lancaster County, PA. When she isn’t being a help desk or wrangling children, she likes to write stuff down.