A Bartable Enya Afternoon
indeed, the whimsy is’t bright
upon the water
(the bay)
creatures of comfort
creatures of pain
crawl restless under the skin
a lock-jawed bull
ferret of flame & levity
shrimps & weasels
a badger at the brow
group discontent in
the orca pod
having lived & lived, seemingly
incessantly—the not stopping
that’s impressive
irredeemable whimsy (again)
a purposeless express of joy
next to a purposeful expression of pain
deep in the guts
a shudder, a growl, hoisting up
fifty years ago there was no
tunnel tube under the bay
mean to say, even guts are temporary
have lingered out of curiosity
& stubbornness
cranking out an absurdity
into a crowd of absurdities
damask rose
chloroform
galadriel
epistemology
rapturous stinging mystery
strike “life” from every line
replace with mystery
Copyright © 2023 by Lindsey Boldt. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 9, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote this poem on a BART train from Oakland to San Francisco, shortly after moving back to the Bay Area, while listening to Enya on headphones. I was simultaneously in pain from a shoulder injury and feeling a warm bath of joy at the sight of the bay and the sky stretched out beyond Oakland. I wanted to say something about the complexity of existence, how pain and joy, suffering and pleasure—ours and everyone else’s—are always constantly overlapping like layers of reverb. How our bodies are multiple, always containing both familiar and unrecognizable others, behaving in ways we can’t anticipate or explain.”
—Lindsey Boldt
Lindsey Boldt
