Let's face it, we're not all as limber as the Greenpeace activists who are protesting the Trump administration's war on the planet by climbing up a crane in Washington, D.C. Many of us have neither the time, nor the strength, nor even enough spare cash, to travel from march to protest to sit-in.
Resistance can be boisterous, and it can also be quiet and quietly shared. Since knowledge is power, and reading is the ammunition of that knowledge, what better time than now to just say no to Trumpian "ignorance is strength" and pick up a good book to read for both inspiration and pleasure?
And that brings me to my friend Nan Socolow, a frequent New York Times commentator and also a sometime guest blogger here at Sardonicky. Her collection of poems, some of which have previously appeared in such publications as Rolling Stone, New Republic and Washingtonian Magazine, has just been published by Pisgah Press in Asheville, N.C.
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| Nan Socolow (back jacket cover, Invasive Procedures) |
Invasive Procedures, the title of the volume, is an apt one. Her subject matter is as penetrating as her Times commentary, running the gamut from marriage, separation, motherhood, growing old, and intimations of mortality, to the fragility and beauty of our endangered planet and its varied life-forms. She finds humor and meaning even in such mundane tasks as changing the sheets and pondering the patterns in dirty dish water; in short, she takes everyday life and infuses it with unique and insight -- and plenty of startlingly piquant neologisms.
Biting the Bullet
When we reach
the overtime stage of life,
over 70, not the golden years,
there is no bible to tell us
what to expect.
And what to do about
the startling aches and pains
that befall our elderly
wellderly illderly bodies.
So we bite the bullet.
and tough it out
to avoid
the undertaker's
waiting room
heebie-jeebies.
Pulling 14
to 16 hour days
was de rigeur
in our thirties
and forties.
And now
in our overtime
we pay for the
crazy dancing
of those days.
In this vale of tears
weltschmerz and
sporadic joys
are the coins
of our realm.
Nan Socolow describes her literary sculpting methods in the introduction to her collection: "A poem is like a chunk of raw marble. I chip away and chip away at the chunk, and it takes form and becomes far smaller and when nothing further can be chipped away--when only the finest essence of a marble scrap is left--that is my poem."
An ardent environmentalist, her love and concern for our planet shine right through the suffocating murk of Donald Trump's unprecedented war on climate science and, as is becoming all too scarily apparent, life itself.
Bodies of Water
Aeons past
before the plates
became continents
when this Earth
was young
bodies of water
encircled
Panagaea.
Now our
blue planet
is a dying zone
a waking
nightmare
pillaged and
plundered,
its watery
places ravaged
by mankind.
Detritus dumped
debris dreck
bottles jars
and enough
plastic to gyre and
gimble and
strangle the
Pacific wabe.
Bizarre fish
Asian snakehead carps
sea lamprey eels
with round sucking mouths
and razor sharp
teeth encroach
in the freshwater
Great Lakes and
mighty Mississippi.
Lionfish
from the Indian
and South
Pacific oceans
loosed from
American aquaria
gauzily dressed
to kill in
fetching saris
swirl en masse
in the Caribbean Sea.
Pythons, boas
gators lurk in the
marshy sawgrass
of the Everglades,
eyes aslit for innocent
passers-by
to squeeze
and swallow.
The five continents
that were once one
Pangaea, connected
jigsaw puzzle pieces
like the carapace on a
hawksbill's shell
are now apart
and prisoned by
waste waters.
Billions of people
dying for a taste of their birthright
of potable water.
Global warming
climate change
inconvenient truths
of our lives on Earth,
truths denied by
some who buy
and chugalug
clean, birthright water
in billions of little
plastic bottles
that will remain
on Earth
long after
we've gone.
*****
Invasive Procedures is available for purchase from Amazon.com and also directly from the publisher, Pisgah Press.
