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A space between stories – a poet’s thoughts

May 1, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Harry Posner

“We are now entering a space between stories.” So says Charles Eisenstein, author of numerous books, including The Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics. As a poet and Dufferin County’s Poet Laureate, this short sentence hit me like a ton of metaphors. It is poetically truthful. But more than that, as the COVID-19 crisis unfolds, it represents a challenge to each of us to understand who we are and where we are as human beings. As we move into the teeth of the viral storm, something that by all reasonable accounts could take months to a year to find its natural end, each of us is being given the opportunity during this time we have ‘between stories’ to grapple with what we can discover about ourselves both inside and out, and our fellow human beings. 

We’re beginning to understand, both intuitively and logically, that yesterday’s story is a thing of the past — 2019 seems like ancient history —  and tomorrow’s story is filled with unknowns. Right now, during this time of physical isolation, we are forced to go inward and reflect on the meaning of our life, and the fact of our mortality, all of this percolating amidst a sea of anxiety and worry. What should I do? What should I think? How should I be? Questions that determine the quality of how our days unfold. A lot of us are unused to living with these kinds of questions constantly hovering around us. We are typically distracted by our work, by our entertainments, by the thousand and one enticements tossed at us by the outside world. As a poet, however, this space between yesterday and tomorrow is where I live much of the time. It doesn’t mean I don’t worry or feel anxious. I do. But writing, reading and sharing poetry is what helps me stay sane and whole. 

Why poetry? Because at its best it reminds us of our deeper selves. It points at the simplest details and says, “Look, there’s a world here, story upon story. Stay awhile and let’s together gaze into this untenable world of ours.” Poetry can provide the eye of calm inside the tornado, pointing us at the essential truths, emotional and spiritual, that underpin everything we do and are. Or, it can exhort us to become beautifully enraged. It is, like life itself, mysterious, terrifying and awe-inspiring. 

Struck by Charles Eisenstein’s words, I wrote this poem:

The poet said the moment is poetic

Uneasy, hard to express, harder to understand

But poetic nonetheless and called for in this

Place where we stand between stories, breaths

Crowded with metaphors keeping distance

We are emptied of pretense, 

Ask ourselves, maybe for the first time

What counts for a life? Whose death matters more?

And what is the poet to do when every second

Is a wound bleeding verses and heartache,

When the very air is a recitation/judgement

On the merits/demerits of the human experiment?

Crush the fragile world to our chest

Whisper, “Where you go, I too go”

Send our poems into the roiling sky

Let the light of brave stars point the way

The COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity to remake ourselves and the world we live in for the better, if only in our imagination. The late poet Mary Oliver wrote, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Standing as I am, as we are, in that space between stories, during National Poetry Month, I can only add, “and who among us will become a brave star?” 

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