Meditation

Abstract

Meditation Camille Dungy (bio) Sit quietly long enough and the river I hear will be the courseof my own blood. Everything I know I have to forget: the champ of lichenchewing down boulder and the unsustainable thrill of the spectrumat magenta and lapis, those and air’s heft, the oppression of fluorescence. Marrow,proximity, its loss: the world gives us too much, truly, to bear. Science says everythingmust quiet so we can continue. Rather, we must quiet everything. I hardly feel the cords I’ve worn so oftenI don’t notice anymore the stain from the time when my uncle swiveled from sinkto cupboard as he’d done daily seven decades, and failedto see me standing with a full cup. Forget it. It’s fine, I said. Distracted by the heat of surprise, practicallydancing, I reached around what I now rememberwas the heart and lung part of his body. I am remembering the muscles that built his body, but not what he said, not the texture of the towel I must have needed.I remember everyone laughing, evenMother, the sound of whose approaching steps I can’t recall. Mother chose maple for her brother’s coffin and, because she did not want us [End Page 495] to have to think about it, for her own. These things are true, but I don’t let them vex me most of the time. Let me bemore specific. The maple floorboards of that old house, their vibrancyprotected by a nearly impenetrable finish: I never thought about that floor. [End Page 496] Camille Dungy CAMILLE DUNGY is Professor of English at Colorado State University. She is author of three volumes of poems, Smith Blue, Suck on the Marrow (winner of the American Book Award in 2011), and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison. She has edited three anthologies, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems That Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade. Copyright © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press