Paying Attention | Margaret A. Haberman
It’s March and there's a light covering of snow on the round granite stones that are resting on our steps. Last week it rained hard and took away most of the snow, but today the white pines and balsam fir have a dusting reminiscent of early winter. It’s that time of year when the weather seesaws between winter and spring. I’ve been up since 6:00 a.m, adjusting to the time change. In an effort to focus on something other than the news, I’ve been considering the phrase to pay attention. To pay, as in, to give what is due. This morning, I paid attention to the contrast of white on grey.
Years ago when my brother was in his early 20s and spending a semester in Nepal he sent me a postcard. On it he’d written,
“I feel as if I haven’t been paying attention, or perhaps, I’ve been
paying attention to all the wrong things.”
Of course, it is up to each of us to determine what the right things are. For me, writing poetry is the right kind of attention to pay, to give what is due to something or someone. I like that it can be a kind of command, firm and urgent.
About a month after losing a dear friend to breast cancer I was walking down Cumberland Avenue in Portland, near the parking garage on Preble Street, a sad part of town made sadder by grief and the grey cold of November. I was heading to a workshop I was supposed to be teaching with my friend, now gone, and looked down at my feet, disconnected from the living world. As I passed the parking garage I heard my name, but when I looked behind me I couldn’t see anyone. It seemed to me a hailing, and, at the time, felt like a message from beyond: Margaret, pay attention.
The inspiration for the poem below came from the last line of a story a friend told me: I never saw the fish. What came to me was a litany of seeing and remembering, drawn on through the poem with that mysterious and contradictory phrase, I never saw. A poem about paying attention.
I Never Saw the Fish
I never saw the fish, or the lime green bicycle resting
against the bricks, or the red wings of the cardinal,
or the barred owl on the branch of the silent white
pine. I never saw the acorn, its fingernail of scarlet
flesh in the leaves, or the red buds on the maple tree,
or the black thread draped upon a white linen shirt
laying on the floor. I never saw the fat porcupine emerge
in spring from the woods behind the stone wall waddling
across newly sprouted grass. I never saw the shard of blue
flecked china nestled in the mud at low tide or the way
your hand rested upon the arm of the chair in the place
we called home before we called another place home.
I never saw the stone steps that led up to the pavilion
in the heat of the Florida Keys behind the old Bahia Honda
Bridge. I never saw the place you turned around, or
the door you walked through the last time we stood
together. I never saw the great blue heron lift off the river
as the wind backed northwest and the current fought
to keep pace toward open water. I never saw the place
you pulled your simple boat ashore, never saw the
way your fingers tugged to pull the bowline taut
to keep it all together.
Margaret A. Haberman lives and writes in Belfast, Maine.
