He was a man who gathered facts
what does moonlight taste like?
as if he could build a world from them,
who first fell in love? with whom?
snatched dates and data from the atmosphere,
what do flowers dream of?
cross-referenced, indexed, filed.
what colour are my eyes?
He questioned endlessly, collated
can you hear a sunbeam strike the ocean?
all the answers, in boxes first,
where did I leave my keys?
then just in piles, great tottering heaps
what noise do Saturn’s rings make?
that rose around him,
what’s the gestation period of the unicorn?
and still, the world eluded him.
where does love live?
For Jilly’s 28 Days of Unreason, where we are all Jim Harrison tribute acts. Today’s quotation is:
“I see today that everyone on earth
wants the answer to the same question
but none has the language to ask it.”
~ Jim Harrison from Songs of Unreason
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Questions all around….and yet no answers. A good contrapuntal write.
Actually, I’d like to know where love lives….I need to have a word.
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OH! Oh, my! You are channeling Harrison! THIS poem. Speechless.
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Missed the forest for the cut, pulped, and processed trees. Beautiful! Love eluded him even as the person brought him his tea, told him not to up too late, and nursed him on his death bed.
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So good. “what does moonlight taste like?” and all the others.
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would love to meet a man who can ask such questions – he is gatherer of transcendental facts. Another super poem from you Sarah, sing-sung in that duet voice
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Fabulous poem Sarah.
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you made me laugh(no small feat) with “where did I leave my keys?”
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Ah, the unanswerable question…
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Fabulous, Sarah. Love the questions–the ordinary, the existential–but that final ending question is perfect. I love how it just hangs there.
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