The Friday Influence

One thing I admire about poetry is the space it creates where meditation can balance into consideration and reckoning. This week’s poem, “Bonding” by Laura M Kaminski, is a good example of what I mean.

The first stanza not only sets the scene, but also presents the range of meditation. The act of walking a new dog is meditated upon via the consideration of particulars. From the moment the speaker picks up the leash, she feels fear as “a grasshopper leaping / eating everything i’ve planted.” Making a grasshopper stand as a metaphor for fear in this direct manner allows for a surrealistic immediacy; the juxtaposition is “leaped” into suddenly, which evokes not only the image but the sensation of both image and concept.

The poem continues to create tension through taut, clipped lines. Through its narrative turns, this meditation on fear reckons with the possible risks involved in walking a dog for the speaker’s physical well-being. As the poem develops, its engagement with the epigraph becomes apparent. By the quote’s logic, in order “to understand” and “to experience” love and friendship, one must be active. Every move of consideration and reckoning in the poem is an active one. Each stanza that unfolds, then, stands as another refusal of “allowing the heart to shrink.”

Bonding – Laura M Kaminski

The only way to understand love is to love. The only way
to experience friendship is to be a friend. If this creates pain,
that’s better than allowing the heart to shrink.
            – Neil Douglas-Klotz, THE SUFI BOOK OF LIFE

i pick up the leash
fear is a grasshopper leaping
eating everything i’ve planted
the new dog is large
but only seven months old

i ask him to sit
my fear of fear is a locust
larger than my first fear
and voracious
i take the risk

i snap the leash onto his
collar and reach for the door
i am determined to find
a way to stay on my feet
even if he pulls or lunges

without blaming him if we
have an accident and without
self-recrimination or second-
guessing if i fall
and twist my spine

fear: a fall could paralyze
locust: not taking that chance
is another form of paralysis
i have nothing to bring
to this but poetry

fear: no one will understand
these words i’ve put to paper
the thought is only seven
minutes old and still unruly
i take the risk

to fail would leave me
trapped inside my body
unable to communicate
get out of myself in any way
locust: open the door

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