Jeanne Marie Beaumont: “Fading into the Epoch”
FADING INTO THE EPOCH
I felt it this morning at first relighting, the lens
of history retreating above my head―back back back
until I was mere pixel, a dash in time, as of course
we, each one, are, the way that Lara toward the end
of Doctor Zhivago plods down the dull Soviet street
becoming smaller and less distinguishable in the frame,
her glamor hidden in a dumpy cloth coat, soon
to be lost in the century that is swallowing her.
But what is this self-life we carry about in our crania,
this one that feels so important today to feed and
encourage and propel forward, to prevail, although
just one among billions of like-minded hardheads,
so many coconuts nodding and bobbing in the
atmosphere, then as the lens keeps pulling back
so many walnuts, so many poppy seeds, particles
of dust moving how, moving where? And these trails
we leave behind, poems, notes of music, yes, but also
ruins of poisonous debris, to what end? Although
what a pretty epoch it was at times, such vibrant colors
and delight of forms, so many voices still speaking
tenderly that floated upward, becoming inaudible
as the wind rushed in and stripped the trees.
Jeanne Marie Beaumont is the author of four volumes of poetry, most recently Letters from Limbo, and a past winner of the National Poetry Series and the Dana Award. Beaumont is also coeditor of The Poets’ Grimm anthology, and the writer of Asylum Song, a verseplay that had its premiere production in New York City in 2019. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Allium, Cave Wall, Lily Poetry Review, The Manhattan Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Verse Daily.