Aaron Caycedo-Kimura's "If this were the day"

Thoughts on this being the day.

If this were the day

I'd still shower, shave,
eat breakfast for the pleasure—
a toasted bagel, a schmear,
lox, red onion,
capers. Definitely
capers. An iced mocha.
I'd skip the stretching,
crunches, push-ups.
Go right to the garden,
check the milkweed
for monarchs, the yarrow
planted yesterday. Back
in the house, straighten out
my studio—just a little—
open my laptop, 
start a poem,
a few lines for drama.
After emailing you
my passwords, go lie
on the sofa, text you
a heart, rest the phone
on my chest. I'd listen
to you stop singing
slightly out of tune
in the kitchen, wait
for the vibration 
of your answer, drift.


from Common Grace (Beacon Press, 2022)

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It’s hard to read the final lines of today’s poem and not think of a kind of soul-companion for them — W.S. Merwin’s short, beautiful poem, “Wish,” which reads in full:

Please one more
kiss in the kitchen
before we turn the lights off

Yeah. That’s it. And it’s that same wish that ends today’s poem — a wish borne out of ordinary love, simplicity, a little bit of kindness.

Though it is New Year’s Day as you read this — hey, happy New Year’s, you, reading this — I’m not thinking of today’s poem because of that fact. I came across it while reading Caycedo-Kimura’s new book, Common Grace, a book of grief, ordinariness, and more. And it struck me as a poem worth thinking of. But, as I write this, it’s hard not to relate this poem to the dawn of a new year. It’s hard not to think of the clarity this poem makes out of some kind of imagined and fast-approaching death as the same kind of clarity that is attempted to made out of the opportunity of a new year.

Today’s poem sheds some of extraneous, sometimes painful aspects of society in favor of pleasure, and joy, and attention, and love. It begins with this declaration to:

eat breakfast for the pleasure—
a toasted bagel, a schmear,
lox, red onion,
capers. Definitely
capers.

This beginning, a joyful assertion of the pleasure of eating, is a kind of shedding of the shame associated with that act. It makes me consider the ways in which so much of modern society has gotten in the way of my own ability to enjoy something as simple as eating, has made me scared to allow myself pleasure, especially when I consider the shame attached to weight, or the demands attached to time (think, too, of the prevalence of microwavable meals offered to people who are on-the-go or on-the-job). And when I think of this past year in my own life, I think of the ways in which I have succumbed almost daily to shame, and the ways in which I have allowed myself — when I haven’t dwelled in shame — to play at this life, to relish in the joy of something like cooking, which is a bit like music-making — full of recognized patterns and tastes and styles, and full, too, of room to be entirely your own.

Just this morning, I cut open a loaf of sourdough I had finished baking the night before to experience that entirely blissful and mysterious sensation of, well, seeing what you made. It’s one of my favorite moments, this experience of knowing the heart of something, sticking your nose in it, touching it, marveling at the texture, allowing yourself some joy even when you feel critical, even when you wonder if it could be lighter or denser or crustier or whatever-you-want-it-to-be. I love that feeling, that balancing act of knowing that this is life: this appreciation of what you can appreciate in the midst of your own doubt and criticism and so much else. It’s a kind of daily work. It requires, at least for me, the constant reminder to stick my nose in the life of the thing, to touch and taste and sense. You can bet, too, that I stuck my nose right into that little airy pocket that looks a little like a nose. Yeah. I put my nose right there.

That same allowance of pleasure — that desire to pay attention to the stuff of life — is at play throughout today’s poem. It’s here, when Caycedo-Kimura writes:

I'd skip the stretching,
crunches, push-ups.
Go right to the garden,
check the milkweed
for monarchs, the yarrow
planted yesterday.

Here, again, Caycedo-Kimura reminds us of what is worth being in the midst of as we move through life. Pleasure, first, and then attention — resisting the societal urge or tendency toward improvement, the crunches and push-ups. Now, I don’t think I would skip a run if I knew I was about to die. I think I would go for a long run, but I think that would be for the same reason that Caycedo-Kimura turns toward the milkweed, the yarrow. I think it is because, over time, I have come to find in running not the celebration of what is so often valorized in society — progress, achievement, and more — but rather a simpler awareness of my body, the world, and my body moving through the world: a language of breath and footfall. I wrote about that awhile ago in this essay, and discussed how the poet Suzanne Buffam summed it up best:

To cross an ocean
You must love the ocean
Before you love the far shore

In other words, I have learned, over time, to love the ocean of my body, and the ocean of this present moment, and the ocean that is this breath, and this breath, and this breath. Yes. Remember that you’re breathing now, and now, and now. I miss these breaths all the time. I miss out on the gentle reminders I need to give myself. I guess I should say that I have tried to learn this, and that I am still trying.

And that’s maybe what Caycedo-Kimura’s poem offers me today. It offers me this reminder again. If, in today’s poem, the speaker is speaking from a place of almost-crossing, from being on that threshold between life and not-life, then I see in the speaker a reminder to love the ocean just one more time. To offer pleasure. To pay attention. To tend to things. To write. To make art. To love.

If I had picked a New Year’s themed poem to share with you today, it would probably have been Kim Addonizio’s “New Year’s Day.” Here it is in full, as it deserves to be shared:

The rain this morning falls   
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell   
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.   
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only   
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never   
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against   
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,   
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out   
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons   
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,   
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know   
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound   
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.   
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want   
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   
and lift my face to it.

It’s funny. I was just in a used bookstore the other day, and I picked up Addonizio’s first book, The Philosopher’s Club, which I read almost immediately after, and, in doing so, was almost immediately reminded of the joy of reading her work, which is not joyful per se, but is so powerfully and insightfully tuned to the frequency of mystery and sorrow and strangeness and love that so much of the work I love is tuned to. She does it here, in this poem, when she writes:

Like me,   
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out   
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons   
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,   
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything.

And then, the resolution — or the resistance of one:

Today I want   
to resolve nothing.

This might seem nihilistic on Addonizio’s part. It reminds me of the end of Evie Shockley’s “on new year’s eve,” where she writes of:

a long aching
       quiet in which we will hear nothing but
the clean crack of our promises breaking.

But I find in Addonizio and Shockley’s lines — rather than nihilism — an awareness of what is worth reminding ourselves of or turning ourselves towards. And for Addonizio, that turn is towards something maybe even kind — the blessing of the rain, which reminds me of James Wright’s poem, “A Blessing,” and the two horses who “have come gladly out of the willows / To welcome my friend and me.” And it reminds me, too, of the speaker of today’s poem — how, in advance of his soon-to-be-death, the attention is focused, with such clarity, on the ordinariness of small lives and the care of big loves. Just checking in on “the milkweed / for monarchs, the yarrow / planted planted yesterday” is enough. It’s enough for the brief and bright end of a life, which means it is enough for this brief and bright life. It must be. It has to be, right?

I almost wrote about a different poem by Caycedo-Kimura today, titled “Winter Psalm.” Here it is:

O Lord, strip me like the sycamore
  in winter, white bark branches
     stretched out in surrender.

It makes no effort to hide
   it's not as enduring as the mountains
      or prudish like the spruce and pine.

Today I walked down South Main,
   passed a man going the other way.
      We said nothing, didn't even look up.

Bundled in gray jackets, hunched over,
   hands stuffed in pockets, we pretended 
      to be protecting ourselves from the cold.

What a sorrowful, honest poem that admits, in those two final stanzas, one aspect of humanness that seems so constantly and sadly prevalent: that we hide our tendency toward frailty and that we pretend ourselves more protected than we are. If checking in on the milkweed and the yarrow is enough for this brief and bright life, it must also be enough not to hide. It must also be enough to be stripped like the sycamore, to look up at those we pass, to say hello, to refuse, when we can, the desire to pretend that we are protected when really we are fragile, tenuous, together alone and alone together for this brief and bright moment.

For what it’s worth, I hope you have a joyous new year. I hope that, if you choose to resolve nothing, then I hope in that choice you find your own forms of blessings and kindnesses. And I hope that, if you do resolve something, you find in that resolution something that allows you to be more fully aware of yourself and this world. But most of all, I wish you the benefits of ordinariness and attention and kindness. I wish you at least one nose (preferably your own) pressed into the soft lightness of just-baked bread. I wish you laughter that comes at a moment when you feel too serious or too scared to laugh, and I wish you the silliness of snot coming out of both nostrils at the wrong time, or of a dance you try to learn but fail to. I wish you the feeling of being yourself in your body. I wish you one less day of shame than you are used to, but hopefully one less week, and hopefully an entire year (I wish this for myself, too). I wish you a deep breath next spring, next summer, next autumn, and I wish you a big, poofy cloud of steam when you exhale next winter. I wish you a tomato season full of sandwiches and sauces reduced to perfection. I wish you pasta to toss in those, and others to share that pasta with. I wish you music, even when it’s the wrong note on an out of tune piano. And I wish you that feeling that happens — so often on one of those bright, blue sky days — when you are doing something so simple and ordinary you’d never give it a second thought, when you’re walking to get coffee with someone, or maybe you’ve just gotten it, and maybe it’s a little too hot, the coffee is, and you’re waiting to take that next sip, and there’s a hand near yours or in yours, and there are people around, and those people are being people, full of their own doubts and joys and little mannerisms, and you’re waiting, you’re waiting, you’re loving, you’re waiting, and you take that next sip, slightly braced, but ready for it, for whatever it could be, however hot, however scalding, and it’s perfect, and you are caught in that moment, and you are held. I wish you that. I wish you that joy.

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A Note:

I am considering adding a subscription feature to this newsletter. I’d rather add a tip jar, but Substack has no option for that, which is annoying!

I am considering adding this subscription feature simply because money is a precarious thing, and I would appreciate any support you feel you would want to send my way, and I would like to provide an option for people’s generosity. I also have a slight suspicion that Substack seems to prioritize giving attention to newsletters that have paid subscribers rather than ones that don’t, which is also annoying, and somewhat frustrating, and somewhat disheartening.

To be clear, this future subscription option would function essentially as a tip jar: it would not offer you anything in addition to this weekly newsletter, and choosing not to subscribe would not detract in any way from what you receive of this newsletter. Everyone — each and every one of you — would still receive the same words each week regardless of whether or not you subscribe, and everyone would still be wonderful. I feel weird offering this subscription option, but I think that’s something I need to get over, right?

Anyways, this will most likely be an option starting next week — please reach out if you have any of your own guidance on this or any opinions about it! Appreciate you.