Skymiles of starlings over the penitentiary.
December a descant and a North Star
like a North Star.
Twice a day, the sun.
The hand of wind over the mountains.
The rest will become, disappear by becoming.
Dark of plenty, of fracture. God’s dark
of perfect recall.
What earth is this if not ripe for threshing?
What joy it was, and how we knew what joy it was.
Today’s piece is from Maya C. Popa’s 2023 collection Wound is the Origin of Wonder. I had the honor of briefly being in Popa’s Conscious Writers Collective and was able to take part in some really amazing discussions about the craft that reinvigorated my love for it.
It’s a short poem, and as a result every word is clearly carefully chosen to carry sonic and conceptual weight. I’m going to resist the urge to do a breakdown of each load for every line simply because I think it will go a little too into the weeds.
The poem opens with a juxtaposition that sets the stage for a series of further juxtapositions. “Skymiles of starlings over the penitentiary.” Sonically, it’s fucking beautiful. The symmetrical sibilance separated by the “o” words feels like the beating of wings. There is clearly conflict between the ideas of freedom and confinement within the line, but there is an additional corporate quantification in the use of “skymiles” that creates this further distance between types of human confinement. The plane ride is (usually) a voluntary confinement.
The second line begins a sort of descent into ambiguity for the speaker. A descant is sometimes called a counterpoint in music, but in the simplest terms its just the voice that stands out above the rest during a song. It feels a bit like the star voice sitting on top of the chorus. December, as it happens, is also the end of the year. The end takes focus and guides us gently towards it. The redundancy of this line is so intention. It’s like a pseudo-tautology. I don’t know if that’s a thing but I’m rocking with it. First we’re given the metaphor of December being a North Star and in that direct metaphor our speaker feels confident in their declaration of the end as being worth following. But the next line shifts to simile, suggesting approximation rather than identity. This repetition with a slight conceptual displacement introduces a bit of doubt. I’m guessing your brain got caught on that line and you re-read it when you read the poem, feeling like you had to get a better grasp on it.
Our next juxtaposition comes with “The hand of wind over the mountains.” The unmovable is placed against a personification of movement. Intimacy and enormity meet in a way that is echoed throughout the entire collection. There is also a subtle nod here to something divine, setting a tone for the back half of the poem.
“The rest will become, disappear by becoming” is pure paradox, implying transformation through disappearance. The reason the line sounds so damn good is because it is metrically sound. It opens with an iamb, and flows through three anapests before ending on a dangling foot. It gives it the quality of trailing off, as if the speaker has lowered their voice in some sort of meditative reflection of what they’re saying. This line also gives the poem its title because everything after is what remains, and yet is also lost.
As we approach the end, we lean fully into the juxtapositions. The dark is both plenty and fracture. That is, it is both generative and destructive. There’s also a sort of liturgical phrasing to this that builds on the meditative quality of the last line. And maybe there’s some thread there. God is (in Abrahamic religions) unknowable yet intimate. Death is both an ending and a beginning. Suffering is not just a punishment, it is participation in divinity. If we read this line in that light, there is a new weight to it. “God’s dark/ of perfect recall” plays on this divine contradiction. Darkness typically implies the unknown or forgotten but here, it’s the opposite. God’s darkness is total knowing. What a truly fucking terrifying notion. Think of everything we wish to forget. Every mistake, or regret. Every embarrassing moment that you allow yourself in solitude but would never want to be watched by another.
The penultimate line furthers the references with big time Matthew 3:12 vibes (can you tell I was raised Irish Catholic?) Threshing is the separating of wheat from chaff, or simply the good from the bad. It is symbolic for judgement and the speaker plays into that symbolism. The shift to a question here is such a significant hinge. Up until this point, the poem has been largely ambiguous, fragmented thoughts. This question isn’t as inquisitive as it is accusatory and fatalistic. This is a world overrun with suffering and contradiction, and the speaker is kind of asking us to cut the shit already.
The final line offers us some manner of response in the face of the absolute. By italicizing the line, it is separated in voice just enough to feel almost defiant. Maybe defiant is the wrong word, but I can’t think of a better one at the moment. It’s not really a defense or a denial, but rather a statement of simple human truth. There was joy and we knew it when we had it. It’s almost like a testimony of integrity, of a soul speaking after judgement. There isn’t a denial of guilt or a request for mercy, just a simple statement of what was real and good. And honestly, what better response is there than that?
Love this analysis, Mike. Miss you in CWC!
This is an excellent analysis, Mike. Wound is the Origin of Wonder is one of if not the best volume of contemporary poetry that I've read. And Maya is one of the top poets out there today, not to mention one of my favorites.