Intimacy

Some decades into the past….
That was a science class
And my teacher was lecturing animatedly.
I was skeptical about it when he said:
All life sprang from inanimate objects some millennia before.
I could not put myself together
To reconcile to that idea however much I tried.

When my child made a hue and cry over
His dilapidated tricycle I left behind when we changed house
And looked possessed when I returned it to him
That unusable piece of metal, rather the scrap of it.
I wondered what elated him and what for.
But the first seeds of doubt
That inanimate objects, perhaps,
Could exercise some influence on life… were sown.

Once when we embarked upon a long tour of south
My brother-in-law proffered his old model car
Which he so covetously maintains at unviable cost.
I warned him of the amount of risk
We would be taking by going in his car.
He laughed away my fears putting his hand over the car,
Just as a jockey would on his pet pony, and said confidently:
“My darling won’t put me to any inconvenience”
And strangely indeed, it did not trouble us
Until after we had completed our tour.
I wondered if the inanimate
Respond as reflexively as living things would.

It is not until I had to leave my house---
For which I saved every penny;
Carefully planned and executed;
And where my children came of age---
I realized that, in truth,
There are wavelengths at which
Living and nonliving communicate with one another.
The walls that sheltered me,
The floor that cured many of my aches,
The door through which I entered with my newborn babe,
And through which the same babe walked out
With her choice husband;
The window, with traces of eager looks
Still hanging on to it
That sent many searching looks for the postman
To deliver a letter from my son.
And today, when I touch them
There seems to flow a strange feeling of oneness
With them into me.
Just as I lived with them all these years,
They had lived with me all these years.
The peels of paint that drop off suddenly
Seem more like my tears that come down inadvertently.

I am convinced:
It may seem queer, strange or even stupid.
Yet, not all manifestations of life
Are within our ken.