Seniority (2)

Older than Allan Briesmaster and myself by a decade, Christopher Levenson has also written about ageing in his newest collection. The poems admit the inevitable physical deficits of advancing years and the distress as those dear to us pass on, into a memory itself fading. But what happens after the first shock has diminished, and daily the ‘new abnormal’ must be faced? Floundering in a sea of discomforting changes, I hoped Levenson’s title Moorings¹ promised an answer.

The book opens on a dark note. In “Lost and Found: A Sequence”, the first four parts catalogue detail after grim detail until “There’s no end to what is lost”, and sigh, “Above all, know when to give up.”² The list is daunting. By part five a compromise is in sight: “We settle, come to terms, / try despite failing eyes, to see things in perspective.”³ Nonetheless, erasing the names and pain of vanished old friends “from diaries and calendars / can bring no resolution, no closure.”⁴ Even worse for a poet, Levenson mourns, “I am lost for words, lose the thread, hear / the whole story unravel. / With time, language disintegrates.”⁵ 

Concluding the Sequence, part eight is a revelation. Beyond ageing’s litany of harsh facts, another way remains. Glimpsing simplicities often passed by and forgotten, Spirit can find itself again in a moment’s eternal quiet unfolding:

          At a loss, briefly we find ourselves
          in things noticed in passing.
          So many times we are taken
          out of ourselves, stumble upon
          an organist practicing
          at dusk in an empty chapel,
          the slant of sunlight thwarted by cloud,
          the evening stillness of reeds
          at attention by the river’s edge;
          wind-flickered wild yellow poppies
          peripheral, by the roadside,
          in a meadow a single voice
          singing but unaware
          of any listeners. This is our reward
          for what will endure, what is given.

Again, gratitude.

_______________

1. Christopher Levenson, Moorings (Qualicum Beach, B.C.: Caitlin Press Inc., 2023).

2. Ibid., “Lost and Found: A Sequence”, p, 8.

3. Ibid., p. 9.

4. Ibid., p. 10.

5. Ibid., p. 9.

6. Ibid., p. 10.