Meditation
When I was a younger man
more full of life than years, I am
sure the sound of the sea did not
disquiet me as it does now.
Surf’s swell and heave against the shore,
the crash, then slow retreat,
hypnotic in full daylight,
at night disturbs, no longer
lulls to sleep.
Perhaps these aging ears
are hearing things
a young man’s cannot hear.
Perhaps they are hearing things
that are not really there.
______________
Keith Hansen
Review by Jan Wiezorek
In “Meditation,” Keith Hansen, like so many painters and poets, takes us to the sea for a sound of rolling waves’ wonder and worry. Hansen compares the young man of himself with a now older one, and hears how life from then to now is one of difference and mystery. This meditation on hearing is filled with the tricks of age and confusion, as well as substance and wholeness—fourteen lines that take us from youth to old age along the shores of our own seas.
Review by Jared Pearce
I like the end of this poem and wish it wasn’t the end: surely we’re all hearing what is not really there, and it’s precisely that not-there-hearing that indicates if we’re young or old, yes?