Clyde's Cage

In the lowlands
on a farm held by rusted nails
my great-grandfather took boarders.
Most slept in a loft
above moos and clucks
under a luminous moon and the wink of stars.
Robert Clyde
was one such boarder.

Clyde was a highwayman, an obscure Scot philosopher,
and, after three pints, a pontificator.
There had been a pub, a fight, and a man
whose throat had been left cut.
Clyde felt pressed to leave and
could not pay what he owed.
My father felt a kinship with this man,
and accepted a poem in lieu of payment.

By thus the debt was paid.

For his part, my father thought the deal favorable.
Atop the poem a note, scrawled by rough-hewn hands,
"The man's writing encapsulates the target of all my pursuits."

If the constraints of the world we live
in can be seen as a cage, it is an apt metaphor
for the varying conditions of creatures
on our wee floating sphere.

An animal when placed in the cage will stomp;
he will pace and thrash, move willy nilly and howl
at whatever rests outside of his domicile. A spectator
might as well be the moon. The animal unrests,
never settles his thoughts enough to start to examine the cage.

A man, however, can do more. He will measure the height
and width and length from shoulder to fingertip, and he will shake
the bars that hold him, not out of animalistic rage or frustration
but in an attempt to measure the give and take
of each shake,
or each pull,
or each thrust.
Rage gives way to calculation; he simply tries to find a way out.

The human being may go through all these steps or he may go through none.
In the most rare and amazing moments a human being will just sit, quite content
in the middle of space. And if you ask the man why he sits whereas the others
would not, he looks at you with such dispassion and with such confidence
that you feel ridiculous for proposing the question.

“The wind off the ocean,” he said, “is whipping my hair,
and the warm sand tickles as its grains slide between my toes.”
And, lo, as I watched the curls on his head did ruffle,
even though it were a windless day.