This evening, I’ll do my first open swim at Cedar Lake. Now (10:45 am), I’m doing a close reading of a poem before I go for a vision test to see if I qualify for a study on new goggles that help people with central vision loss read (if I’m remembering this correctly; I was originally scheduled to do this test in mid-March, but they’ve had to reschedule it twice now). The goggles sound cool, and I appreciate their approach to vision loss — create tools to help instead of trying to “cure” someone, but I especially interested in having my eyes checked out. Will I find out anything new?
Back to reading my poem. It’s by Kaveh Akbar and is the poem of the day on poets.org.
Love Poem with Tumor and Petrified Dog/ Kaveh Akbar
There is a tumor in my sacroiliac joint
and snowflakes in my coffee.
I’m in Iowa with the cats
and you’re in Pompeii.
You send a video: lizards rushing into limestone
which remind you of being a kid in Florida.
In Florida we memorized sonnets
while leaping around green anoles.
I’ve forgotten the poems.
Your black tights, even in that heat.
Mostly that’s what I remember.
It’s okay to say it straight.
Like: I’m scared, still,
that I might be dying.
Pomegranates growing from Pompeiian ash,
scandalizing propriety—
you send a picture and I do not say,
It just looks like a tree
or Another of God’s secrets
wasted on me.
Which part of the mind
gets you to the soul?
I am reading St. John of the Cross,
a character you might’ve put in a poem:
In the evening of life,
we will be judged on love alone.
Some petrified dog. Table bread,
a painted doorway.
You’ve been with me forever.
You know all my angels.
How could I say no to you,
taking off your earrings to kiss me?
This first couplet! Starting with the tumor, and then the snowflakes in coffee. So many questions — snowflakes? is it winter? is he outside? are the actual snowflakes?
each couplet its own thing yet together they make a story
I love the brevity and the space — room to breathe and to think
anole: a type of green lizard
still: as in, motionless? frozen? and as in, I continue to be? I love playing with the different meanings of still. I could try doing a Jane Hirshfield assay about “still” or a poem like, Pine or To Cast
pomegranates in ash scandalizing propriety? Looked it up, and my best guess, thanks to AI, is that the scandal is over dating the eruption. People thought it was August, but the presence of pomegranates suggests later in the fall. Is that the reference?
“Which part of the mind gets you to the soul?” I love the inclusion of this question amidst the descriptions of their fear and what they’re reading and their recollections of their beloved
petrified dog? Had to look that one up too: Victim 8 — a dog chained to a pillar, trapped, suffocated, preserved
Searching for clues to some of these lines, I encountered a reference to a early version of pizza preserved in the ash, referred to as a Still Life, and it clicked: Akbar’s “still” — scared stiff? — is made metaphor in the preserving ash of Pompei. Wow! I love how what poets do with myths/facts/(his)story!
Just got back from my vision test to see if I’m a good fit for the study. I passed the first round and am a “very interesting candidate.” Nice. Apparently my vision is unusual in its fixation on the center. At one point I said, I’ve trained myself to not look away from the Void. Ha ha — what a poet-y thing to say. At the end, I asked if he thought I might be close to legally blind. He thought so and encouraged me to meet with my ophthalmologist to be tested and to fill out paperwork for disability benefits. This news doesn’t make me sad: strangely, I see it as validation or verification, and the tax breaks are significant.
A few other things: To determine if I was a good candidate, I had to take a cognitive test, which I’ve never done. What is the year? The season? Repeat these words after me: book pencil wristwatch. Take this piece of paper from me with your right hand and fold it in half, then put it on the floor. Spell world backwards. The last one: write a sentence on this piece of paper. My sentence: Tests make me nervous.
The main test I took was a Vision Field Test. The last time I took this test was in 2019. You put your chin on a chin rest, your forehead up against a bar, and look into a camera at a red circle in the center. With a clicker in your hand, click every time you see a light. Not too many clicks. At one point, my purple spinn-y friend — the floater in my eye that is neon violet and looks like a small ball with a feather attached that spins around — appeared. Hi friend! This test isn’t hard, just long: about 8 minutes per eye, and tiring — having to sit still, and stare at the same spot. Sitting there, I thought, I should write a poem about this: the sound of the clicking, the dark room, the red circle that was there, then wasn’t, then was again, my spinn-y friend, after the test seeing the image with so much black. Last time I took this test, I felt some anxiety about vision loss. This time: none. More curiosity and fascination.
Open swim cancelled.
Threat of severe weather. Bummer. Already, open swim has been cancelled 3 times. Oh well, the weather looks great for tomorrow night and not swimming tonight gives my shoulder one more day to rest up.