What Comes Easy
/John Blair
According to Chekhov only entropy and the glint
of moonlight on broken glass & perhaps the indigestible bits
of happiness that we peel off and gnaw like gristle—
becoming is easy enough for most of us to get at least part
of it right loving is easy compared to being loved
hating, too being where and when you are is harder
than it looks and all we do is look nothing of course
comes easier than longing what you want by all our
loving gods is res ipsa loquitur exactly what you are
right up until you aren’t anymore and the past comes
hard whether you want it or not because it hurts
and because there is no past and there never will be
though we do try every lost moment skirring panicked
through the brush like wrens the instant we open our eyes;
we dance in the pastures like wiccans wet as afterbirth
and barefoot in the gloaming trying to magick the moments
back but without the sorrow as pure-feathered putti
who never dare to leave us even as we gather the fruit
of our low-hanging labors from day to day until again
comes the cool evening when we dance our bloody rites
on shards of broken and moonlit glass in the service
of forcing it all of it the world from edge
to keening moonlit edge to come as easy
as it always goes.
Author’s Commentary: This poem takes a quote from Chekhov ("Only entropy comes easy") and uses that idea to muse about how life, like any other ordered system, tends to inexorably devolve into disorder and fragmentation.
John Blair has published six books, most recently Playful Song Called Beautiful (U. of Iowa Press, 2016) and his seventh book, The Art of Forgetting, is forthcoming in late 2020 from Measure Press.
