by Erika Meitner
even though it is only early September
& in the strip mall with the Target
where I went to get a sympathy card
for my sister-in-law whose mom died
& wound up instead getting a six-pack
of sympathy cards because lately my
friends’ parents keep dying I noticed
that the newly shuttered Bed Bath
& Beyond next to the also vacated
Buy Buy Baby had just reopened
as a Halloween City, & it is always
too soon for retail holidays, candy
in bulk turning up in the seasonal
aisle in late August right after school
supplies are moved to clearance.
Sacred time is indefinitely recoverable,
indefinitely repeatable, wrote Eliade
& I’m not sure what qualifies as sacred
when I am profane, or, rather, historical,
or just not-transcendent but I still
refuse to be intimidated by time
even when, at the head of the path
to the beach at Eastern Point Light-
house, there’s a dead gull lying
on its side with a rock placed carefully
over its head, as if to say, hey! if you
want to experience the terrifying
beauty of Dog Bar Breakwater—
of the rough surf pounding Cape Ann
while you walk on granite blocks
with wide cracks between them
stretching half a mile into the ocean—
you must first step over a reminder
of your own mortality & mortality
isn’t the same as death, but a sort of
awareness that time itself is sacred
& epiphanous & as much as I plan
I think maybe the one-day-at-a-time
people are right: we never know
what’s around the irreversible
corner. My sister calls from her car
on the way to do tahara—preparing
a body for burial by washing it, in a
ritual act of purification. She is a rabbi
so this is not as unusual as it seems,
but any Jew can be part of a holy
society of volunteers who tend
to the dead gently, with intention
& many apologies: a chevra kadisha.
This practice, I’d imagine, leads to
embodied temporal awareness,
which is nothing like standing under
elms in autumn when their leaves
turn yellow & fall like snow in moments
when the wind picks up though it’s
still over seventy most days, dusk arriving
earlier & earlier until it’s basically
winter when it comes to the light
if not the weather & is it worth
mentioning that I also bought two
felt pumpkins from the Target dollar
bin because buying only a six-pack
of sympathy cards was too depressing
& we are all participating in the passing
of time which I refuse to be intimidated by,
even when those golden leaves catch
in my hair, whether time is cyclical
or linear, whether I’m distracted or
have focus. Good people are meant
to engage in a daily practice of seeing
carefully, of opening to what’s literally
in front of us, the word “now” & its
demands, but I find any mono-focus
on the present moment moralizing
& want to resist, though perhaps
a kind of dichotomy with no gray
area would be healthier for me & if
I had good temporal habits I would
not think of the past, on some days
with me all the time like the arthritis
in my knees, on others asserting
itself like extra pens spilling from
my purse when I’m digging in the
dark expanse for my phone & keys.
Even worse: the what-ifs or any
kind of future plans, & when my
friend sends her mother’s obituary
for me to edit (trust the poet) again
I am steeped in mortality: leaves
behind a loving family who will miss
her dearly, she was a leader & loyal
friend whose greatest loves were . . .
I hope someone can answer
that question for me one day,
the way, when I brought my mother’s
gold watch to the jeweller because
it wasn’t keeping time, he said,
you can try laying it on its side &
tapping it, but the movement
is probably broken & you’ll need to
send it away for repair. In legal terms
“repair time” means the interval
between the issuance of a corrective-
maintenance work order & the return
of the system to operation so perhaps
the best we can hope for with time
is not to be reassured or comforted
or heartened or emboldened or
solaced by it, but just to stay ticking.
- Share this Poem:
