Choker-setter Mantra

Coastal Salish loggers,

mid-century, listened to

that sound trees made in

the moment of their falling,

voice or song of the suffering

that comes from knowing you’ve

been uprooted by your brother, his

tools cutting straight to the heartwood.

 

In a 1st, bad paraphrase of the First Noble

Truth, she said, Suffering: followed by the

phrase, may it go away, your own, even 

anyone’s, but of course it never did.

So she exchanged it, in some kind

of desperation, really, with: let it

stay, could tell after even just

one day, that it at least &

at last approached: one,

 

thing, noble.

 

After those

kindred, life

-giving spirits

fell, Salish men

& boys, absent the

usual rich offerings of

large cured tobacco leaves,

left their unsmoked cigarettes

behind, not willing to leave butts

but instead giving something up, the

rest of their smokes for the day, taking

away their own pleasure, least they could

 

do before such

suffering.

 

I have worn my own

suffering like a badge

after surviving worst

of it, which, all by it-

 

self, boxes it in, con-

tains it. I have even

been known, some-

times to avoid pain,

 

my own-or-

another’s 

 

suffering

simply to

 

get more

easily thru

 

a day.

 

It’s hard

to hear

sounds

 

trees 

make

when

they

 

surrender

to human

hands, at

hands of

 

kin, of

bloods,

turning

 

sap to

syrup.

 

Wouldn’t you rather have something

sweet at the end of your day? Say a

strong drink? Silence, a good book?

 

Love that stays?

By all means, 

let it stay, even

 

If all you have

to offer back’s

a few leaves in

 

cylinders we

still call cigs

even as they

 

still burn our

lungs, finger

-tips, even

 

as we still

breathe, w/

the trees.

 

Each day the Salish

men would return

from their labors

 

carrying their own

families’ blood on

their hands. How

 

did they live w/

themselves, w/

the lives they

 

took? It was

a question

 

they kept

asking —

 

that, & 

feeling

 

a desire

for it

 

to go

back

 

to a

way

 

it was

before:

 

they kept

longing

 

for that.

 

Let that suffering, that comes with desire,

go, she said, as if the Second Noble 

truth was easy, or even possible, 

 

as if he didn’t know if he was staying

or going or letting it do either/or.

 

When you stare at an old hardwood floor

for too long, he said, you begin to notice

that it’s still alive, how individual grains 

of planks start to show relationships, a

desire to play together. &, even held in

that place, a kind of stasis, there is still

fingering or figuring between identities

one can almost hear.  But, there is no 

sound of suffering in that attachment,

 

only a knitting back together w/ a

golden thread, all scars showing, 

last testament to our tries to repair

 

every broken, each last felled thing. 

 

About the Poem:

This poem grew like a living thing. I do like how language does that: I was seeing axe-cuts, offerings, thinking of everything sentient being related to everything, everyone else. Maybe the poem got away from me a bit, but I liked all of its ungainly branches, each following associatively after another: indigenous loggers, buddhism, what bell hooks & Robin Wall Kimmerer have to say about tobacco— it all wanted in & the form kept stretching to accommodate it.

 

About the Poet:

Rick Benjamin is a former state poet laureate of Rhode Island & has worked in schools, colleges & universities, youth & adult detention facilities, assisted living centers (in Providence, 17 years & counting!), with people aged four to 101. He currently lives in Providence.