Pattiann Rogers, a contemporary American poet, has always been fascinated by the natural world. She has such admiration for the world and its creatures that at one time her goal was to feature every creature in the world within a poem. Drawn to the world both through the the science of the universe as well and its beauty, her poetry is a combination of accuracy and lyricism.
As she has said, "Poetry is much nearer to music than it is to prose." And again, "When I write poetry I’m singing, when I write prose I’m talking and there’s all the difference in the world in how you can use the language to make the music you need."
With this in mind, I invite you to two readings of her poem, "The Laying-on of Hands." In your first reading at least, I encourage you to read it aloud, listening to the poem as you would a piece of music, allowing the sound of the language to take you where it wants to go. By reading it aloud, you hear the sounds of the words as they flow from one to another and the ways in which they interact with each other.
Instead of focusing on the "message" of the poem and what it might be trying to factually communicate, I encourage you to let the poem merely roll over you.
Rogers says, "..it was meant to be a song and you have to enjoy the music as much as whatever you think the message is..."
The Laying-on Of Hands
By Pattiann Rogers
There’s a gentleness we haven’t learned yet
but we’ve seen it—the way an early morning haze
can settle in the wayside hedges of lilac and yew,
permeate the emptiness between every scaly
bud and leafstalk until it becomes bound,
fully contained, shaped by the spires,
the stiff pins and purple-white blossoms
of that tangled wall.
There’s a subtlety we haven’t mastered yet,
but we recognize it—the way moonlight passes
simultaneously upon, through, beyond
the open wing of the crane fly
without altering a single detail
of its smallest paper vein. We know
there is a perfect consideration
of touching possible. The merest snow
accomplishes that, assuming the exact
configuration of the bristled beggarweed
while the beggarweed remains
exclusively itself.
If I could discover that same tension
of muscle myself, if I could move, imagining
smoke finding the forest-lines of the sun
at dusk, if I could place my hand
with that motion, achieve the proper
stance of union and isolation
in fingers and palm, place my hand
with less pressure than a water strider
places by the seeds of its toes
on the surface of the pond, balance
that way, skin to bark, my hand
fully open on the trunk of this elm tree
right now, I know it would be possible
to feel immediately every tissue imposition
and ringed liturgy, every bloodvein
and vacuum of that tree’s presence, perceive
immediately both the hard, jerking start
of the seedling in winter and the spore-filled
moss and liquid decay of the fallen trunk
to come, both the angle of tilt in the green sun
off every leaf above and the slow lightning
of hair roots in their buried dark below,
know even the reverse silhouette of my own hand
experienced from inner bark out,
even the moment of this very revelation
of woman and tree itself where it was locked
millennia before in those tight molecules
of suckers and sapwood. Without harm
or alteration or surrender of any kind, I know
my hand laid properly, could discover this much.
Maybe someone, given enough practice, given
enough desire, might be able to dream
a feat like this sometime
into reality.
Published in Poetry (October/November 1987), © Pattiann Rogers
Rogers believes in the mystery of the world. “I am sure of one thing. That we are born ignorant and we will die ignorant. The world is a great, great mystery. Part of the pleasure of living is confronting that mystery."
To recognize that mystery requires a profound attention to what is around you, a willingness to let yourself be shaped into its contours by what you encounter. How do you experience the mystery of the world? Have you every so gently inhabited a particular space that you were able to listen and experience the existence of another without disturbing them by your own presence?
In a second reading, pay attention to the images of the poem and what they communicate to you. Do any of the images particularly draw you toward them?
Today, if we can sit in the presence of something else long enough and quietly enough to settle into its reality, we may experience a taste of what this poem dreams of.
Pattiann Rogers' book, Firekeeper, which contains Laying-on of Hands among other selected poems can be ordered from her publisher here.
Pattiann Rogers
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Louise