A Poem For A Monday

the mississippi river empties into the gulf
Lucille Clifton

and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white-tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow.
it is the great circulation
of the earth's body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing. every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river staring into time,
whispering mistakenly;
only here. only now.

I kept a journal for many years, and in July 2003, I recorded this poem and wrote: "We're really so insignificant and time is so insignificant and it has all happened to someone before. All of it is essentially still here and always will be."

And here we are again. So much of us heavy with the past and still slogging ahead. Yet contrary to what I usually feel about my inability to savor the present, the narrator seems to imply that the present is worthless and overvalued; time is moving and circulating amongst us in ways that it has for hundreds of thousands of minutes, hours, days, years. To acknowledge that a slice of a moment can be unique and savored and be ours would seem futile. I like the idea of relating ourselves to what has come before and what will follow, but without those slices, without reveling in those tiny moments, I don't think we would be us.