reality is
what? — a puzzle to be held
caringly — sucked, chewed,
spat out and re-examined –
but above all to be held
I’ve managed to cut down drastically the amount of time I spend watching TV. I did though, watch part of a programme online yesterday, about the love life of animals. The programme asks are animals capable of ‘love’ in the human sense. There is some wonderful footage of Bonobo ape babies, and quite clearly this morning’s poem reflects those images. The ape babies were orphans and had been assigned human foster mothers. Last night I dreamed of the poet Robert Graves, whose house I visited in 1983 by which time he was not speaking to anyone — because of what was presumably Alzheimer’s. While I chatted with his wife, she offered me tea and sponge cake. She also placed a plate with some cake for Robert, but he picked up a playing card instead and put that in his mouth. ‘Reality’ is not a thing. Science treats it as a thing. I’m inclined to treat it as a thing even when I’m thinking to myself how mysterious a thing it is. The image I’ve landed upon in the poem is useful, because it includes the ‘thingness’ of reality, but the idea of holding suggests the holding of babies and hence of people. I have great trouble with the idea of a personal God. But maybe the nature of this puzzle called reality could be more like a person than a thing.
sciencegoodmagicbetter 