A dear friend’s perceptive kindness (“if you need some inspiration”) brought this poem to my virtual doorstep earlier in the week.

Some days prior, a friend at work was eager to go for lunch to report his pride in a complicated project successfully completed. Some days after, a colleague asked for help in pulling together the details of her project in order to move forward: “Baby steps. But you have to keep taking them.”

A young acquaintance asked for time to pass along news of his academic and career explorations after a productive spring break. Another young friend, beyond college and scrambling for footing in ‘the outside world’, shared news of girlfriend and grandmother, job and apartment, Easter candy and new movies.

It’s spring again, I think. The people around me are waking up from winter and bringing forth all manner of minute joys. We are crocus people: green stems from barren ground, yellow flowers who’ve no right to be, but are. I’ve seen it all again for the first time, and only just this week.

It’s still colder here than it ought to be, but all the snow is finally gone. Even yesterday (especially yesterday), I would have described, with a chill, how beleaguered I felt. After reading this poem again and again this week, I have to acknowledge today how blessed I also am.

Twenty years ago (almost to the day), the New York Review of Books published Kenneth Koch’s One Train May Hide Another (his audio here). On a trip to Kenya, he simply explained, he saw a sign at a railroad crossing and wrote this poem out of that experience:

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it is safe to go on reading. …

This is a poem to read over and over until you simply fall in and are carried away. He runs through many situations and details of ordinary living, holding up each so we can see that which is hidden and that which is revealed. Nothing escapes his observation. This poem could be read aloud on Valentine’s Day:

… One love may hide another love or
the same love
As when “I love you” suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when “I’m full of doubts”
Hides “I’m certain about something and it is that” …

or at a funeral: “We used to live there, my wife and I, but / One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.” or even just on Monday morning:

“… and one cup of coffee [may hide]
Another, too, until one is over-excited. …”

It is vitally important, the poem instructs, to be aware of the moments of one’s life. Remember to be deliberately intent with seriousness of purpose. Remember to observe closely and honestly. But don’t take it all too seriously: “… One bath / may hide another bath / As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain”.

This poem is feast and festival of our finite lifespans on earth, our limited capabilities, our inherent imperfections, and the absolute boundaries of time. We cannot be everywhere, do everything, grasp it all (in hands or minds or even, hearts). So, faced with a super-abundance of all that is good (and all that is not), how are we to live?

Mindfully, it suggests. Pay attention and be unalone.

“It / can be important / To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.”

Or who.

____________________

In their obituary, the New York Times identified Kenneth Koch (1925-2002) as “a [founding] poet of the New York School whose work combined the sardonic wit of a borscht-belt comic, the erotic whimsy of a Surrealist painter and the gritty wisdom of a scared young soldier…” He was an original: prolific poet and playwright, Columbia University professor, exuberant and experimental educator, award-winning writer.

Across an enormous career of numerous noteworthy accomplishments, his books on teaching poetry (to young and old alike) serve as a particular legacy: Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?: Teaching Great Poetry to Children; I Never Told Anybody: Teaching Poetry Writing to Old People; and Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry.

(“hands after working” from wolfgangfoto / cc by-nd)