'Aging as a Spiritual Practice' & 'Antifragility', by Robert Ronnow

Aging as a Spiritual Practice

    —with a line by Andrew Marvell

Beautiful summer day. You know you’re gonna die
that’s why you know no joy.
Obsessed with self, there is no answer
unless religion, tv, stories, sports matter.
So what if nothing rhymes and I don’t
bring my life into an expressible state
or fight purposelessness, anomie. No one writes.
Running the gauntlet alone. A good day to die, the Apaches say.

For men like us dying’s easy, it’s living that’s hard.
And since dying’s much like living, that’s hard too.
There’s some contentment in letting community decide
your place in it. We’re not talking to you.
Really, it’s a perfect day. Every leaf is out
that’s coming out. The grass is high
and unidentified yet another year. Being knowledgeable
is the best defense against your insignificance.

Can’t stop the quince from blossoming
or my sons from smoking, speeding.
The best that can be done or said’s a blessing.
Less tv, less guessing
about the effects of your anger unless
you want to be an angry man forever.
Coming from the funeral with friends,
talking on the telephone. OK about being alone.

Alive, almost sure of it. Whether I’m a visitor
to my life or the actual owner.
Mature poets steal, most are masturbators.
This house could use a good cleaning,
dusting for ghosts. I should subscribe
to the local newspaper, do my job well,
do less until one thing’s done well.
What would that be? Old, and yet so young.

There are a million poets, I’m poet #500K.
Plenty of mysteries, infinite philosophies,
prayers, laws and unwritten rules.
That’s why we go to school, life’s complicated.
All I do not know: ATP, probabilities,
the glorious revolution, meiosis and mitosis
and all I’ll never see, the bottom of the ocean,
the palm at the end of the mind, a wolverine.

There are certain indicators, undeniable,
inexorable. Forget-me-not, is that all I want?
To get lucky, you gotta be careful first.
To be great, you gotta be willing to sound BAD.
Although we cannot make the sun stand still
yet will we make him run. Brave revelers.
Signed engagement letter attached.
Attachment to self and to things to do.

Antifragility

—The relation between fragility, convexity,   
 and sensitivity to disorder is mathematical.

In last night’s movie, a young writer
and an older, married with children French woman
fall in love. They did not meet during a village massacre
and money is no object, Manhattan
the place I was priced out of. But after everything has happened
she cannot leave her children, not even for love, because of love,
the love that brooks no serendipity.

Here, in my family, love is taken for granted
except when it’s withdrawn and then even the trees lose all meaning,
familiarity. Now it is almost dawn:
this and that must get done in committee or alone.
Don’t reach, go slow as the day will allow.
But that’s not what I came to say.
Perfect rest v. having a destiny.

A complete breakdown in self-discipline.
It begins by saying nothing I do matters under the eye of eternity.
Hamlet x 5 centuries.
Add to that all the science–chemistry, physics–calculus and music
I don’t know. I have sat next to, at weddings,
brain surgeons and robot engineers. I hit the street
choosing a church on Fifth Ave. or Trinity Cemetery, walking the heartless city.

In the subsequent late night movie, a wealthy
altruistic doctor arranges for the murder
of his neurotic concubine. His guilt provides us
with an opportunity to consider
the concepts of faith and forgiveness, that all will be well in the end
after a period of meaningless suffering.
In this way the seasons have been circulating for eons via convexity.

I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m doing it anyway.
You trust in genetics, God, prosthetics or prayer, whatever
gets you to the morning. That’s when the sun,
a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second
warms your bones.
You may remember an old lover who’s gone before
or continues to exist on another plane, in another ecstasy.

Having installed a new toilet seat
and made a few philanthropic donations
I can kick back tonight and watch movies, right?
Not. I’m ridding myself of another addiction
like illegal drugs via caloric restrictions
getting enough sleep for two people or more
and reading none of the dry words in books from the library.

When there’s nothing to do, when I’m bored or dreary
I’ll sit still and watch from the window, I’ll wait
for the weather to change, which it will.

Robert Ronnow's most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012).
www.ronnowpoetry.com.
paypal: ronnow@taconic.net

View fullsize

Photography by Nathan Bailey