Distant Regard
by Tony Hoagland
If I knew I would be dead by this time next year,
I believe I would spend the months from now till then
writing thank-you notes to strangers and acquaintances,
telling them, “You really were a great travel agent,”
or
“I never got the taste of your kisses out of my mouth.”
or
“Watching you walk across the room was part of my destination.”
It would be the equivalent, I think,
of leaving a chocolate wrapped in shiny foil
on the pillow of a guest in a hotel–
“Hotel of earth, where we resided for some years together,”
I start to say,
Before I realize it is a terrible cliche,
and stop,
and then go on, forgiving myself in a mere split second.
Because now that I’m dying, I just go
forward like water,
flowing around obstacles
and second thoughts,
not getting snagged, just continuing
with my long list of thank-yous,
which seems to naturally expand to include sunlight and wind,
and the aspen trees which gleam and shimmer in the yard
as if grateful for being soaked last night
by the irrigation system invented by an individual
to whom I am quietly grateful.
Outside it is autumn, the philosophical season,
When cold air sharpens the intellect;
The hills are red and copper in their shaggy majesty.
The clouds blow overhead like governments and years.
It took me a long time to understand the phrase “distant regard,”
but I am grateful for it now,
and I am grateful for my heart,
that turned out to be good, after all;
and grateful for my mind,
to which, in retrospect,
I can see
I have never been sufficiently kind.
________
TONY HOAGLAND'S sixth book of poems, Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, will be issued by Craywolf Press in 2018.
He teaches at the University of Houston and is working on a craft book about poetry, called Five Powers, Forty Lessons. He has also published two collections of craft essays about poetry, Real Sofistakashun and Twenty Poems That Could Save America.
