Please Remember To Wash Your Hands
There are wolf thickets.
There are culverts full of bears.
There are alpine hares
that were lost children.
Do not talk to strangers.
Do not cross the road.
Make a ring of fire.
Do not play with matches.
There are migrant birds
that shouldn't be here.
There are people listening.
There are ill considered
consequences. There are
no answers to your liking.
There are precautions
you can take. Switch off
the lights. Remove
sharp objects on entering
the liferaft. Suck fish eyes
to stave off thirst.
There are many things
that do not come alive
except in the small hours
before the day makes it.
Wolf thickets.
Half silences.
The distance
between lovers.
Commentary
This is a marvellously quiet poem; Greaves makes very effective use of the repeated, passive “there are” to stitch together a series of images into a compelling, coherent whole. I love the way it starts off as a parody of the litany of advice children are subjected to, and then gradually gets darker and more serious, pivoting around the lines
There are ill considered
consequences. There are
no answers to your liking.
and then taking another wholly unexpected turn in the penultimate stanza until the whole poem crystallises in the last two lines.
I was reminded of my favourite Atwood poem, “Variations on the Word ‘Sleep’” [Poem #1093] - there is the same sense, towards the end, of being gradually enveloped in a tangible, organic silence that is composed in equal parts of love and distance. There is also, in counterpoint, a pervasive note of darkness and night that conjures up terrors only reinforced by the “childish” tone at the start, the whole adding up to a poem whose richness and depth belies its surface simplicity.
— Martin
Links
I couldn’t find out much about Greaves;
http://www.thepoem.co.uk/limelight/greaves.htm says “Sandra Greaves was born in Edinburgh and now lives in London.” Anyone knowing more about her is, as usual, encouraged to write in.