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Homeostasis
“When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary
not to change.” —Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland
In general, everybody wishes things
Would stay the same. An endless barbecue
Of ribs and marinated chicken wings
Prepared by chefs with nothing else to do
Sounds fine to me; for others, creamy sauces
In which they like to dip their crudités
Are better. Modest gains should balance losses
Today as any other normal day;
Our mild addictions ought to be fulfilled
Exactly as they’ve always been. If wars
Are waged, let no one whom we love be killed,
And let the conflict be on foreign shores;
But also, let the calm lacustrine waters
In which we bathe be tepid, neither cold
Nor hot. Tomorrow, all our nubile daughters
Shall marry well, before they’ve grown too old
To bear and raise a prepossessing brood
For us to dote on. Fed from silver spoons,
These children will ingest ambrosial food
Beside us in eternal afternoons.
first published in Lunar Poetry (2015)
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C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
Well put CB: yes, very few want real change as it is so disturbing to our comforts. Someone once said – better than I am about to say it – Time was what God invented to prevent everything happening at once! This is a great example of what I would call wisdom literature: punchy, aphoristic and … true!
When people ask me, James, why I still smoke, I tell them it’s to keep things as they are. One Tibetan guru told his students that there are three kinds of pain: the pain of pain, the pain of alternation, and the pain of existence. The second one is what’s relevant here. Another reason God might have invented time is to teach us how to wait. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between wisdom and sheer tomfoolery.
C.B. – Isn’t it interesting that conservatives are advocating for change, and progressives are arguing against it? Surely strange bedfellows!
Imagine how bored we would be if all were always as we wished & we had no contrasts or deprivations. A beautifully stated poem with a new word for me – “lacustrine” which brings to mind lackluster, the very state whereof you speak. Thank you.
Maybe so, JD, but it might depend on what we’ve wished for. No good lake lacks luster.
I felt the flow and identified with the sentiments! Wishing the good times would stay or would have stayed saturates our minds and memories. I was reminded of the old popular song, “For the Good Times.”
Or, Roy, “Let the Good Times Roll”. But there are sentiments, and then there is sentimentality Good times are good times, and it is better to reenact them than it is to reminisce about them.
Sounds good to me, where do I sign up for this?
It’s at your doorstep, Yael. Just open the package and follow the directions. The worse things have been, the higher the liklihood that the best is yet to come.
This poem makes me long to get my variables in check, sink into lush, lacustrine waters, nibble on crudites dipped in silken sauce and sip a stiff gin… or two. C.B., thank you!
Who doesn’t want to go to those places, Susan?
The overwhelming volume of information we consume each day makes the kind of homeostasis you describe an alluring temptation. It becomes all too easy to consign human suffering to another, distant realm, letting “the conflict be on foreign shores,” and saying “c’est la vie.” It seems to me that much of this dilemma can be (at least) addressed by the Serenity Prayer.
I wish I had commented on this fine poem earlier, but I seem to have missed it in the rush of schoolwork.
I love perfectly crafted quatrains, especially if enjambment goes from one quatrain to the next, easily and smoothly. Anderson does that here, making the poem a unified narrative and argument. He moves effortlessly from food to modest gains to mild addictions to warfare to bathing to daughters and grandchildren, and it all fits together, like the links in a chain.
And the argument that ties it all into unity? Simply this: be calm, stay cool, don’t get excited, avoid trouble, and tend your own garden. Despite the flow of change, let everything stay basically the same. The title “Homeostasis” is very aptly chosen. The imagery of “tepid waters” is a good instance of the Greek ideal of seeking the Golden Mean in all things.
After what has seemed an endless madhouse of electioneering and sloganizing, this poem is exactly what we all need. Thank you, Kip.