Blog Post #12 - Life On Mars

"...Would you go then,
Even for a few nights, into that other life where you
And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?

Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my
Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?
Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep
Or charging through his veins. And he'll never grow old,
Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired

And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen
That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life
In which I'm forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
Thinking one day I'll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns."

"DON'T YOU WONDER, SOMETIMES?" (8-20, page 19)

This poem stood out to me because it is something I think about. Tracey K. Smith's collection tackles the ideas of death and life in a very existential/what-is-going-on-in-the-universe way. In this poem it seems likes she is pondering what it means to die and exist in life. She says that a cosmic being, Bowie, never dies and makes us "see." See what exactly I'm not sure, but he says that everything in the universe lives on and is waiting for someone to go back to it. She then expands this idea to people. She says that there is a woman (presumably dead or not in someone's life anymore) that will always have dark hair and a flush face. I see this as the fact that people exist in your mind as the last way you remember them. Smith also says that there's a life in which she's always a child looking out a window, wanting to touch the world. This could mean she existed that way when she was younger and might be longing to go back to that mindset, optimistic and curious. But I also think in a very odd way that that point in time still exists even though she is past it. Maybe the universe is fluid and time exists all at once.

I would also like to point out that the most frustrating thing in this collection is when she uses the word "it" and I never know what "it" is.