Goldberg Variations, Aria
“The fox knows many things,
but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
~Archilochus
Each day this month I write to you by hand
to say in thirty ways one thing.
Only one thing’s worth the postage
and what time the border crossing takes.
Each day I swim in the same lake.
I stretch my arms into the green, skin striped
with morning light. I stretch my arms
toward the other shore, tall trees, deadfall,
eagle landing in a whir to sip
between the reeds.
Hidden cosmos buoys a mirror
of blue and gold.
I pull your name across the lake,
towed in a slow prayer.
Walk with me through these doors
again. Hold fast down the flight
of stairs. Look closely, watch your step.
Remember how the water
in the cellar pools?
In winter, nothing smothers it.
There is one thing beneath all things,
form and freedom, countless streams
from just one spring.
And we all chip at the root
of it, dowsing through a weary field
gone to seed, Queen Anne’s lace
and chicory. We stumble
to our knees beside the shore again,
helpless to divine
the aquifer, our name
on a white stone.
Take your time. So many rooms
and corridors. A tap drips,
far-off metronome. Pipes
ache in the cold, complain.
There will be time, there will be time.
We pray.
In these hills there is a lake
I wrestle through in morning light.
You’re a blue house
in another state.
Clouds mail themselves
to you. Open the rain:
all its voices say one thing,
one big thing,
inside your hands.
Notes:
I wrote this poem a few years ago, during the pandemic. I’d just discovered a little lake near my house and went there every morning to swim alone. The silence and the repetitive motion became a contemplative practice; it felt like pushing into and through things that were weighing on me. That summer, I was particularly burdened by a close friend’s struggle with alcohol addiction. I often prayed for my friend as I swam through the lake. I’m happy to say they’ve been sober for over 1,000 days now.
This poem describes praying for and trying to love someone out of a deeper source of love, God’s love, which often wells up where it’s unexpected. I wanted to convey a slow, meditative feeling, like my swims across the lake and like the Goldberg aria, so I used short lines, short sentences, and a lot of punctuation. I’m clueless about classical music, but my friend taught me that the musical material in the aria comes back again and again, in different forms, throughout the Goldberg variations. It got me thinking of what repeats itself in my life and what I want to repeat to those I love.