London (part 2)

Over the past couple of nights I read a favorite from childhood, A Wrinkle in Time. As swell as ever. If you never read it, or if you know a ten to fourteen year old who's never read it, I recommend. It's a book I will push on niece and nephews as they get older. Bleak day in London, pasty sky, bits of rain.I got a little lost walking around today and briefly I felt a stranger's isolation, and I fell into one of those weird and useless ruminations about humanity's position in space and time. One day we will be dust, no one to remember us, the planet we walk on will be sunmelted, etc.

All true (I believe) but it's pointless to worry about it. The fat red sun will eat Shakespeare, the battle of Hastings, the cowtown of Londinium, and every other English thing and every other thing on earth too. And if time is an illusion then all of this bad news has already happened, is happening now. Boo! None of this is new thinking, but when I feel lost or isolated my tendency is to think about dust, the sun, and time. To take a very large scale view of my troubles. Not too strategic and I always pull myself out of it and think more useful thoughts like Ask for directions Bourland or Why not step out of the rain, pull out the fucking map, and figure out where you are? Today I center on English things because I am in London for a few days. A lot of violence has landed on or sailed upon this island for as long as humans have lived here. Another thing about England is, it makes me think of foxes, by which I mean the small to medium-sized canids that run around the countryside, and of fox hunting, which began in England. Which makes me think -- I'm just explaining the path I took to get to the poem, below -- of Ms. Clifton's great poem A Dream of Foxes, which has nothing at all to do with England and the last part of which I give here. Enjoy. Thanks to Stacey and David for letting me write here for a while. I hope you got a chuckle out of it.

a dream of foxes (last section of larger poem, A Dream of Foxes)
by Lucille Clifton

in the dream of foxes
there is a field
and a procession of women
clean as good children
no hollow in the world
surrounded by dogs
no fur clumped bloody
on the ground
only a lovely time
of honest women stepping
without fear or guilt or shame
safe through the generous fields.

from Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000
American Poets Continuum

--Eric Bourland 29 May 2010 for BAP