Donika Kelly, "Sanctuary"

A powerful poetry reading can't be written about, probably. However, we can say "these words struck me. I should speak, too."

Sanctuary (from Poetry)
Donika Kelly
  
The tide pool crumples like a woman
into the smallest version of herself,
bleeding onto whatever touches her.
 
The ocean, I mean, not a woman, filled
with plastic lace, and closer to the vanishing
point, something brown breaks  the surface—human,
 
maybe, a hand or foot or an island
of trash—but no, it’s just a garden of kelp.
A wild life.
 
This is a prayer like the sea
urchin is a prayer, like the sea
star is a prayer, like the otter and cucumber—
 
as if I know what prayer means. 
 
I call this the difficulty of the non-believer,
or, put another way, waking, every morning, without a god. 
 
How to understand, then, what deserves rescue
and what deserves to suffer.
 
Who.
 
Or should I say, what must
be sheltered and what abandoned. 
 
Who.
 
I might ask you to imagine a young girl,
no older than ten but also no younger,
on a field trip to a rescue. Can you
 
see her? She is led to the gates that separate
the wounded sea lions from their home and the class.
How the girl wishes this measure of salvation for herself:
 
to claim her own barking voice, to revel
in her own scent and sleek brown body, her fingers
woven into the cyclone fence.

I was privileged to hear Donika Kelly Wednesday night. All her lines are magnetic, pulling you into bewilderment about the ordinary. In "Sanctuary," she wonders how tide pools, the ocean, "a garden of kelp," prayers, and wounded sea lions are. How they appear, whether they reveal an essence. For a sample of what I mean, observe the first stanza:

The tide pool crumples like a woman
into the smallest version of herself,
bleeding onto whatever touches her.

Perhaps the tide pool was not, or is not being, swept away by higher tides. Maybe it is a crumple of sand and rocks, a crumple teeming with life not always seen. It is on the edge of appearance and being. The tide pool is delicate, and one wonders whether it always bleeds, always remains small.

I'm not ignoring the simile. "The tide pool crumples like a woman" wrecks any serious reader. The question of being does not stay limited to, say, the fulfillment of destiny. Plenty of people exist while being abused, neglected, bullied, and injured. Plenty create and care while struggling to survive.

Seeing the tide pool is a consideration of crushed interiority. For a number of philosophers, this is not an inquiry worth pursuing. However, I'm thinking a lot about Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics. The fundamental question of metaphysics, "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?", requires more than verbalizing the question. Truly asking means "taking a stand on it, posing it, compelling oneself into the state of this questioning" (1). I can imagine no greater step "into the state of this questioning" than glimpsing oneself in the movements of ocean and earth. Donika Kelly:

closer to the vanishing
point, something brown breaks  the surface—human,
 
maybe, a hand or foot or an island
of trash—but no, it’s just a garden of kelp.
A wild life.

The poem asks authentically and thus asks about everything. It makes a rough sense that tough thoughts reside in a cavernous, crumpled space. It's hard to believe thinking is so brutal, but that might be why some are absolutely frightened to try it.

This is a prayer like the sea
urchin is a prayer, like the sea
star is a prayer, like the otter and cucumber—
 
as if I know what prayer means. 

At the reading, these lines washed over me.

You could call this, as "Sanctuary" does, "the difficulty of the non-believer." It could be the case that if you identify a sacred object, you can understand "what deserves rescue / and what deserves to suffer."

I don't know. I'm interested in the "prayer like the sea." A cosmic power, like God, requires a cosmic force for its awakening. But you can't grasp such a force! You fall back on simpler beings: urchin, star, otter, cucumber. They are distinct, sometimes even alive. Can they reach beyond? Can they give us what is needed, how to be?

I'm interested in how the search for the sacred collapses. This doesn't mean the sacred doesn't exist. It just means it is anchored in something else. For all I know, the sea cucumber is sacred, a genuine prayer like the sea itself. I would need to know what prayer is to confirm that, though. And if I knew that, would I believe?

Inquiring into how things are–how beings stand–can only have so much effectiveness in the face of needed answers. Still, you must try, as it is prerequisite to understanding the presence of another answer.

"Sanctuary" concludes with "wounded sea lions" separated both from their "home" and a class of ten year olds. One ten year old in particular observes the situation:

...She is led to the gates that separate
the wounded sea lions from their home and the class.
How the girl wishes this measure of salvation for herself:
 
to claim her own barking voice, to revel
in her own scent and sleek brown body, her fingers
woven into the cyclone fence.

The sea li0ns reside in captivity, but they have a place to rest. They are given a chance to recover. This, the possibility of healing, a space which invites what is good, is sanctuary. As Kelly says, "this measure of salvation." The more I meditate on it, the more meager and necessary it seems.

The way this current construction of the world bullies others multiplies so quickly that I cannot help but think of Heidegger's "overwhelming sway." That is key to his initial reading of the "Ode to Man" in Antigone. Mankind is confronted by a ruthless violence and makes their place among it through various violent ways. Fascists are rediscovering Heidegger and finding him useful to their project in part because of this emphasis on struggle. It lends itself to toxic, crude notions of masculinity and power.

The idea of using power to create places to rest and breathe does not have to involve violence. It is possible to see slivers of the good and build from there. A "measure of salvation" is a beginning. If it allows an embrace of one's own voice, smell, body, and touch, a great good has blossomed. One thing which has become very clear to me over the last few years is how insistent idiots are in denying anyone else has anything good. To sum up the world I see: I never imagined I'd see so many parents question what their kids accomplish.

References

Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics. Translation Gregory Fried and Richard Polt. New Haven: Yale, 2000.