Pleasure by Rick Barot
Pleasure
Rick BarotYou are told to believe in one paradise
and then there is the paradise you come to know.
The shoes lined up in pairs by the door
and the herd moving with its mysterious intent
across a dark plain. The blue of the sky
which is the zenith of all colors
and the love of the man in the next room,
strong and rough as a hog’s back.
My mind has a slow metabolism, it is slow
to understand what anything means
but it understands that if you look at something
long enough, it will have something
to say to you. The sun that is strangely bright
on some days, a poisoned canary,
and the crop of winter rocks in a meadow
in April. Learning decades later
the name of the hospital where you were born
and watching the child eat a mango
as though it is time he is eating, time shining
on his lips. On fewer days I agree
with the poet’s dread of being
the wrong person in the right world, and believe
in adhesion, in never showing up
empty-handed, even if the pleasure I know best
is fused with the abject. There is always
the other side of the heart, its coaxing:
You are here. You can begin again. You can rise.
MARGINALIA
1.
The paradise I know is smaller: your toothbrush next to mine on the counter. The way you hum while washing dishes. How the light falls across our unmade bed on Sunday mornings when we have nowhere to be but here.
2.
Do you notice how long it takes to see what was always there? I think about the way love shows up in leftovers saved, in doors held open, in the quiet attention we pay to each other’s breathing.
3.
The pleasure I know best is braided with sorrow. Joy that tastes like salt because I know it won’t last forever. The sweetness of your hand in mine made sharper by all the hands I’ve lost. How even happiness carries the weight of its own impermanence.
4.
I have been the wrong person in the right world so many times. Standing in rooms full of laughter while my heart was breaking. Watching sunsets through tears and feeling guilty for not being grateful enough. Learning that it’s okay to be complicated, to hold beauty and pain in the same breath.
5.
What my heart keeps whispering: You are here with me, with the morning light streaming through our kitchen window, with the ordinary miracle of another day we get to be alive together.
6.
I am learning to show up with what I have instead of what I think I should have. That is to say: a voice that trembles when I say your name but I say it anyway, because you are my paradise, imperfect and real.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Moving the Bones by Rick Barot, published by Milkweed Editions, 2024. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
““You are told to believe in one paradise / and then there is the paradise you come to know,” begins Rick Barot. What follows is an account of the rich and thorny valley between those poles. Moving the Bones dwells in liminal spaces—of love and memory, the pandemic’s singular domesticity, a serene cemetery of ancestral plots, dawn. In precise and tender verse, Barot captures the particularities of being in the middle of one’s life, reflecting on the joys and sorrows of the past and confronting the inevitabilities that lie ahead.
For Barot, this presence of mind is an art of being lost in thought. “My mind has a slow metabolism, it is slow / to understand what anything means,” he confides, “but understands that if you look at something / long enough, it will have something / to say to you.” Appreciating a Rembrandt, standing in a Goodwill, watching a boy with a flower behind his ear—we encounter ephemeral murmurs of meaning everywhere, but only by slowing down, listening. If we take time to notice the enduring insights of daily moments, if we praise cherry blossoms, lungs, and crying, we might find it easier to bear the loss of a loved one, the sting of solitude, the body’s decline.
By laying bare his own experiences, Barot brings us close enough to witness the lyrical work of consciousness. Patient and attentive, this collection illuminates the everyday and invites us to find pleasure in doing the same, at every stage of life.” (Source)
ABOUT RICK BAROT
Rick Barot’s most recent book of poems is Moving the Bones (Milkweed Editions, 2024). He lives in Tacoma, Washington, and directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. (Source)
Read more poems by Rick Barot • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Twitter • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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