The New Experience
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I was ready for a new experience.
All the old ones had burned out.
They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside
And blew in drifts across the fairgrounds and fields.
From a distance some appeared to be smoldering
But when I approached with my hat in my hands
They let out small puffs of smoke and expired.
Through the windows of houses I saw lives lit up
With the otherworldly glow of TV
And these were smoking a little bit too.
I flew to Rome. I flew to Greece.
I sat on a rock in the shade of the Acropolis
And conjured dusky columns in the clouds.
I watched waves lap the crumbling coast.
I heard wind strip the woods.
I saw the last living snow leopard
Pacing in the dirt. Experience taught me
That nothing worth doing is worth doing
For the sake of experience alone.
I bit into an apple that tasted sweetly of time.
The sun came out. It was the old sun
With only a few billion years left to shine.
Often "new" is just a re-experiencing of the old with new eyes. It is not our experiences and places that change, but the way we view the minute to the gigantic. How to revisit the sweetness of an apple when our mouths have touched its lips hundreds of times throughout our lives.
ReplyDeleteEve reference?
DeleteI had to keep reading the sentence about what experience taught. It is that new experiences are not worth doing, it is that the experience is worth doing for much more that just doing something new. The qualities that make up the new experience are worth it.
Or, as you mention, just seeing an old experience with new eyes.