*Originally posted on my Wordpress blog 07.04.2022

I was on my way to somewhere else this morning, when I thumbed open my journal and re-discovered this poem. I do that sometimes. I find a poem or a piece of writing that impresses me and I print it out and tape it into my journal. Later I get a delightful surprise when I chance to find it hidden away. Today's  encounter with an uncovered treasure only served to demonstrate the presence of serendipity. The last few mornings have been a wee bit dark in my head.  There are lots of reasons for that (not the least of which is the state of the world) and I can too easily allow myself to be sucked under by gloom and dismay.

So imagine my surprise when the phrases in this poem stared back at me. The poet speaks about all the words that are absent, the words that don't exist. The word for a break in friendship , for example or - get this:

"No verb for accidentally
breaking a thing
while trying to get it open
- a marriage, for example."

He lists several examples of words that don't happen in our vocabulary, spaces that remain empty.  Finally, he ends the poem with this:

"No word for waking up in the morning
and looking around,
because the mysterious spirit

that drives all things
seems to have returned,
and is on your side again."

I swear. That is exactly what happens to me all the time. I think it used to happen to my dad too. He would go weeks in a dark frame of mind and then, one day, for no reason that any of us could discern, his frame of mind would lighten and he would be okay again. I likely have a more complete understanding of moods and mood disorders than my dad had. I certainly have more tools than my dad ever had to deal with the scattered energy of emotions. Yet I get pulled down and what pulls me up? Some mysterious spirit.

Mystery is a guest in my life all the time. When I was younger, I think I generally just declined her presence. I would simply not answer the door. Or I would politely answer the knock and then give the same line I gave to the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses who used to frequent the neighborhood:  "Thank you. I like my life as it is so you don't need to waste your time here."  In other words, don't bother me with your pointless words about things that don't make sense.

But here I am, some years later, older and perhaps wiser? Or perhaps simply more open? More curious? More receptive to that which I don't understand?  At the moment, I don't care what has changed, only that it has changed.  Life is nothing if not mysterious, amirite?

 

Here is the full poem.

Special Problems in Vocabulary

BY TONY HOAGLAND

There is no single particular noun

for the way a friendship,

stretched over time, grows thin,

then one day snaps with a popping sound.

 

No verb for accidentally

breaking a thing

while trying to get it open

 —a marriage, for example.

 

No particular phrase for

losing a book

in the middle of reading it,

and therefore never learning the end.

 

There is no expression, in English, at least,

for avoiding the sight

of your own body in the mirror,

for disliking the touch

 

of the afternoon sun,

for walking into the flatlands and dust

that stretch out before you

after your adventures are done.

 

No adjective for gradually speaking less and less,

because you have stopped being able

to say the one thing that would

break your life loose from its grip.

 

Certainly no name that one can imagine

for the aspen tree outside the kitchen window,

in spade-shaped leaves

 

spinning on their stems,

working themselves into

a pale-green, vegetable blur.

 

No word for waking up one morning

and looking around,

because the mysterious spirit

 

that drives all things

seems to have returned,

and is on your side again.

 

Tony Hoagland, "Special Problems in Vocabulary" from Application for Release from the Dream. Copyright © 2015 by Tony Hoagland.