Childfree

The notes for this poem were written, not in my usual notebook, but rather on the backs of two small receipts.  As the first of these scraps is labelled ‘1’ and the second ‘3’ I fear that my musings that occupied receipt ‘2’ are now lost to posterity.  Still, I worked with what I had left and wrote the following poem.

            As I have referenced childlessness and loneliness before it would appear that this poem is part of a sequence that can be studied to bring out dark fears hidden well in my psyche, but posted blatantly in my poetry.  A continuing concern with family and isolation might well be able to be illustrated by judicious quotation from the existing poems.  That might well be true, but I think that I would like to cite evidence and suggest alternative readings before too many of you start delving into what you might think is my unconscious.

            The title is a clear indication of how the poem might be read.  It is instructive to compare the title, Childfree with the more poignant ‘Childless’.  I think that using Childfree as a focus will give a very different reading to the poem, especially by concentrating on the second word in the title!

            I would also remind readers that ‘I’ of the poem is not necessarily an exact equivalent of the ‘I’ of the writer.  It is true that I, the writer, have no children – but I would suggest, for me, that is a statement of fact rather than a statement of loss.

            I will not deny that this poem is founded on the observation of an actual experience of mine in which I watched the families around me (and the smokers within those families) and felt myself distanced from what was going on – but the self-pity that is suggested in the two lines towards the end of the poem,

                                   I’m the only one alone,

                       and nobody’s concern

                                   was not the overriding emotion of the moment, though it does seem to play a crucial role in this particular poem. 

            And why shouldn’t poems have a life that is a development beyond the limitations of their production!

 

Childfree

A paean to The Family!

This outdoor café’s noise

is proof of that fecundity

where laughing progeny

preserve in youth and age

the borders (firm and

mutually covert)

that keep the years

together quite apart.

The smoke of adult cigarettes

held, finger crooked, is

pose with built-in elegance and

keeps the filth away from kids

but not from me, for

            I’m the only one alone,

and nobody’s concern.

But pen-scrawled fragments

draw all in as part of my own

silent tête-à-tête.

I think the ending with the three lines separated makes an effective picture of the writer as voyeur/puppet-master, with the words on the page being the augmented reality created by the poet.  Or it could be read as complete self-deception, the social ‘saving lie’ of someone living through words and not through life as it is really lived. 

            I think that I can live with the ambiguity!