the national poetry month issue || blue lace colander
TRANSCRIPT
University of Northern Iowa
Blue Lace ColanderAuthor(s): Timothy WalshSource: The North American Review, Vol. 290, No. 2, The National Poetry Month Issue (Mar. -Apr., 2005), p. 4Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127327 .
Accessed: 12/06/2014 20:51
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NAR
TIMOTHY WALSH
Blue Lace Colander
This would have been a poem about a colander,
a philosophical poem, startling and provocative, but her blue lace underwear was so distracting?
peeking out above her low-cut pants where she sat with her back to me in the coffee shop? that I lost what would have been the first line
of this poem. Lost it completely. I probably could have reconstructed it
if I pounced right on it, but the delicate blue lace of her underwear
kept derailing my attention as she twirled strands of her hair
round and round her finger.
She seemed to be working hard on something and was not distracted by the noise and the bustle
and the cell phone voices?
just as I am not distracted by these things ...
though I am easily undone by unexpected undergarments.
As far as I remember, this poem would have partly been
to explain why I keep an old enamelware colander
by my writing desk,
up on a windowsill
where it collects the morning sun
and leaks sunlight through its patterned perforations onto my page.
I think I was going to make the case
that all existence could be explained by this colander?
how the vast stream of impressions and sensations
passes through us like pasta water through a colander, our minds retaining only the bulkier strands
while the fluid passes through.
Because, yes, this antique colander does remind me
how our lives are mediated by filters and screens?
like window screens keeping things out
and colanders keeping things in.
We could make a list of such things: fish nets, coffee filters, memory, slotted spoons, dust masks, CliffsNotes, all our bodily membranes, our five senses,
our digestive systems, all recorded history...
There would be no end to such a list.
And now my quaint enamelware colander
and her blue lace underwear
somehow seem to go together.
Enamelware and underwear ...
blue lace and this perforated steel bowl.
I suppose colanders and lace are not entirely dissimilar?
how the lace invites the eye in
through delicate openings where a hint of skin
shows through.
And I suppose it would not be impossible to fashion a colander of blue lace as a way of saying that it is the colander itself
or the lace
that should capture our attention even if our fleeting inspirations are so easily lost
down time's gurgling drain.
SECOND PLACE JAMES HEARST POETRY PRIZE
4 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW March-April 2005
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