Current by Alan Soldofsky

March 10, 2015   Current   Alan Soldofsky

I’m careful where I step. Water ripples greenish blue against hot sand; pebbles mixed with quartz grains and pine needles, sharp amid the duff, blown down from the upper stories of the sugar pines clumped along the beach. Kids falling off paddle boards into the cold lake, voices like stretched brake linings in the dry air. A geometric rim of mountains in the near distance. A few geese float detached on the current. Beside us a family under a mesh canopy speaks English and Russian. I love the present with its layers of seconds faceted like sparks hammered off the glinting surface. I want to stay here endlessly, standing at the convergence of sand and water while we watch them sequestered under the clutter of branches, breathing suntan lotion. I dread the future, yet it arrives little by little. Knowingly we disappear into it. Our bodies dissolve molecule by molecule swept out to the edge of the intangible, where light is compressed  into blackness. Where red ants crawl in their columns across rotting earth, leaving no more than a trail of resin behind.            Copyright © 2015 by Alan Soldofsky. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I am attracted to one-word titles that contain a density of homonyms. I began writing ‘Current’ in my notebook on a pine-shaded beach at Lake Tahoe, while rereading the opening pages of Donald Revell’s The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye. I wrote a quick first draft, looking out at the water, practicing using my eyes to stay in the present, and later rewrote the poem wanting to embody the ‘velocity’ of my attention, and to elongate that moment, which had long since passed.” —Alan Soldofsky   Alan Soldofsky is the author of In the Buddha Factory (Truman State University Press, 2013). He teaches at San Jose State University where he directs the MFA program in creative writing and lives in San Jose. Most Recent Book by Soldofsky   In the Buddha Factory (Truman State University Press, 2013) "In Betweenness" by Pierre Joris "Individual Time" by Alice Notley "Watching the Sea Go" by Dana Levin Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006,Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.