Hayden Saunier
Navigational Notes
What can we do to bring the ship near to its longing?
- Rene Char
1.
Move the longing toward the ship.
2.
Diffuse the gravitational pull and heft
of longing by pretending
there is no longing.
This quiets its sharp-tipped pain,
dulls those mournful cello notes.
3.
Call longing by another name—
weakness, witchcraft, turpitude,
dirty-bird-soiling-the-nest, ungrateful child.
4.
Belittle it gently.
5.
Or dominate, humiliate it,
so that longing becomes revulsion
and the ship turns away gladly
from its no-longer-called-longing
even though the ship has not moved
nor the longing
only the names we call things,
the weight and number of stones we have eaten
to steady the ship.
6.
Why is the ship not moving?
7.
Why is it anchored and to what?
8.
If those questions are too large
then so is the ship.
9.
Get a smaller ship.
10.
Strip and jump in, swim.
11.
No, don’t. Don’t strip and swim.
Unknown waters, unknown distances, and longing
that can’t find its real name anymore—
too deep, too cold, too blind.
12.
So go in dreams.
13.
Paddle a slim canoe through a moonless night
beneath stars that rise and set
bright in salt water. Trail galaxies
of bioluminescent creatures
in your silent wake
until the curved bow of your boat
nudges a curved shore.
Lean back, watch the turning
stars until everything comes close
and the ship and its longing are one.
14.
Watch for that sky wherever you are.
Watch for that sky.
Hayden Saunier’s fifth poetry collection, A Cartography of Home, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books in early 2021. Widely published, her work has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, and Gell Poetry Award, among others. She is an actor and the founder/director of the poetry + improvisation performance group, No River Twice.
Return to November 2020 Edition
What can we do to bring the ship near to its longing?
- Rene Char
1.
Move the longing toward the ship.
2.
Diffuse the gravitational pull and heft
of longing by pretending
there is no longing.
This quiets its sharp-tipped pain,
dulls those mournful cello notes.
3.
Call longing by another name—
weakness, witchcraft, turpitude,
dirty-bird-soiling-the-nest, ungrateful child.
4.
Belittle it gently.
5.
Or dominate, humiliate it,
so that longing becomes revulsion
and the ship turns away gladly
from its no-longer-called-longing
even though the ship has not moved
nor the longing
only the names we call things,
the weight and number of stones we have eaten
to steady the ship.
6.
Why is the ship not moving?
7.
Why is it anchored and to what?
8.
If those questions are too large
then so is the ship.
9.
Get a smaller ship.
10.
Strip and jump in, swim.
11.
No, don’t. Don’t strip and swim.
Unknown waters, unknown distances, and longing
that can’t find its real name anymore—
too deep, too cold, too blind.
12.
So go in dreams.
13.
Paddle a slim canoe through a moonless night
beneath stars that rise and set
bright in salt water. Trail galaxies
of bioluminescent creatures
in your silent wake
until the curved bow of your boat
nudges a curved shore.
Lean back, watch the turning
stars until everything comes close
and the ship and its longing are one.
14.
Watch for that sky wherever you are.
Watch for that sky.
Hayden Saunier’s fifth poetry collection, A Cartography of Home, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books in early 2021. Widely published, her work has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, and Gell Poetry Award, among others. She is an actor and the founder/director of the poetry + improvisation performance group, No River Twice.
Return to November 2020 Edition