Profession: Poet
A text from the Rumbles from the Grinder series
As a poet, what’s my use to society?
Airports are places of poetry. Places where hopes and exhaustion, boredom, and efficiency create a unique synergy. Like Californian cuisine, with an overpriced latte on the side. They are gateways into a Universe of hugs, parking lots, smiles, and luxury. There is a strange oddity about airports, compounded by the fact that, when facing the customs officer, you must look everything but odd.
The customs officer I will face in Montreal, as I will be moving back to Canada in a few months with my German husband after 20 years in Europe, will certainly be polite, probably friendly, undoubtedly efficient. He or she will ask for my Canadian passport, whether I have an address in Canada, and my marriage certificate to register my husband’s claim to a piece of the New World. All of that standard, all of that expected.
Then will come the murky part: for my husband to be allowed in, I have to sponsor him. And for that, I need a source of income.
Ideally, I need a profession.
I could say ‘language teacher,’ and that would be right.
I could say ‘journalist’ and show my press card.
I could even say ‘professor’ and present a pile of recommendation letters stamped and signed.
All of that would be real, but none of it feels true.
What’s my profession? — I am a poet.
‘How is that a profession?’ could be the polite response. Or, more brutally, ‘that’s not a real job.’
Canada, from the look of the news, has no need for poets.
Or does it?
As a poet, my job is to hear the melody of raindrops on the shingles.
As a poet, my job is to lament the passing of a polluted river.
As a poet, my job is to observe the beauty of the snow melting on the branches of a tall pine tree.
As a poet, my job is to describe the horrors lived by a tiny girl clutching her doll in the midst of war.
As a poet, my job is to sing the taste of the first snowflake.
As a poet, my job is to mourn the depravity of our education system.
As a poet, my job is to dive into human mystery.
As a poet, my job is to understand the mighty in the tiny.
As a poet, my job is to see the tiny in the mighty.
As a poet, my job is to make the world make sense.
How’s that not necessary?
We can only use three languages to describe the Universe: music, mathematics, and poetry. Music enables us to reach higher dimensions of Matter and Mind. Mathematics describes the relationship between quarks and whatever lies between them. Poetry expresses the movements of the mind as they pertain to quarks and galaxies.
The language of mathematics, as tricky as it is, is only used by an elite. The language of music, although it can be heard by everyone, is only truly accessible as a usable language to musicians and composers.
The language of poetry can be understood by every single body that breathes and dreams.
And if it is true what physics tells us, that in the end, quarks are units of pure energy, then how consciousness emerges, how it stems and flowers can only be understood through poetry.
Maybe, and it is my thesis, our minds stem from one universal Source. Perhaps is the structure of the Universe entirely poetic.
Perhaps the Universes are a glorious system of multidimensional allegories. Our single minds indeed work that way. Try to understand your dreams without knowing your own inner symbology!
What came first: the Verse or the Universe?
Were they born together as the Will and the Word in a Cosmic Orgasm aptly named the Big Bang?
Then we, as poets, are the physicists exploring the poetic structure of the Multiverse. How is such a job not essential?
Will I have the courage to say that to you, dear Custom Officer?
Will I have the courage to be me?
Will I play it bravely or safely?
It all hangs on you, dear Custom Officer, in the spark of intelligence in your eyes. In your own search for understanding your own humanity.
It will depend on the bond forged by a particular longing for beauty and mystery.
A special bond between you and me.
- So, my dear officer, what will you require from me?
