Poem Review: Park Bench Poems
This is the second last review of Ponder 2023. Returning from a year of highs and lows has taken me a while. But discipline has kept me going through the year, and this review is proof that art can survive if the artist is disciplined enough.
One of the places I go and ruminate is the apartment park complex in Chennai, India. It is beautiful — with a grass lawn and a small amphitheater, but the real beauty is the canopy of trees — cherry blossoms, peepal trees, overgrown moonbeam plants, neems, and tamarinds. The canopy is dense, providing cool shade. The trees hiss while they swerve in the soothing breeze.
Right below the canopy and across the lawn are a set of park benches and swings. Like me, those who stay at home come to ruminate, chat, or make those phone calls that you want to make alone.
If the park bench had ears, it would tell many stories. But we know that they can’t. This thought put me in search of the ‘Park Bench Poems’; to my surprise, I found three. Priya Patel and I have written a set of poems around the park bench, but that does not count here. These are fresh takes from awesome poets.
“Seated here in contemplations lost, my thought discovers vaster space beyond, supernal silence and unfathomed peace”
― Giacomo Leopardi
As we sit on the proverbial park bench, we look at three different poems from three magnificent poets:
a) The Bench ( Part III): Peace by Lisa Chater Ph.D. explores the magic of something that is left behind that we all should respect;
b) ‘I and Bounarotti’ by Shweta Hitesh Joshi wonders about how the vain city life has overtaken peaceful sanity
c) ‘The Lady on the Bench’ by Kyle Castor is a poignant tale of how fleeting life can be.
The essence of this poem illuminates us with the fickleness of life, yet how memories can still linger to make the park bench a key part of our life’s journey.
Poem 1: The Bench ( Part III): Peace
There was a person who lived on this bench — spending his days and nights under shine and rain and another, a frequent visitor who was a stranger but quickly turned into his friend. Then, one day, the resident of that bench was gone.
You’re my favorite topic,
you know,
and how time
would slow
when we sat
on your bench.
People would come,
and they’d go,
but they did not know
why they came and they slowed
when they came near your bench.
There was just this white halo
around your homeless soul
so people would come
and they’d go,
to your old bench.
Relieved of a burden,
someone had heard them,
their souls were at peace
when they rested at ease,
with you on your bench.
You left,
but you stayed,
and your bench remains,
so we speak and we pray,
at your holy bench.
~Lisa Chater, PhD © 2022
Commentary on Poem 1:
Park benches are boats of companionship and also vessels containing memories. Lisa Chater shares the conversation with two individuals, who were bench mates once, but one of them is no more — and hence this conversation is in absentia. But there is a story about the missing friend.
You’re my favorite topic,
you know,
and how time
would slow
when we sat
on your bench.
‘Your bench’ — the one who is missing, in a sense, owned the bench because he had been staying there — the bench was his home, perhaps. We see those ‘homeless’ making park benches their home. When we sit with them for a while, the conversations inevitably are about them — their bench, their story.
People would come,
and they’d go,
but they did not know
why they came and they slowed
when they came near your bench.
There is some affinity with the friend who stays on the bench. People would come and go, but they were attracted to the person on the bench. Why? They never know. But, they walked toward the bench and slowed, probably because of concern or affinity.
“In the outworks of our lives, we were almost strangers, but we shared a certain outlook on human life and human destiny, which, from the very first, made a bond of extreme strength . . . . At our very first meeting, we talked with continually increasing intimacy.
― Bertrand Russell, Portraits From Memory and Other Essays
Wasn’t the bench supposed to be vacant? For people to sit, ponder, or converse, and go? Is the present occupant a squatter? Or is there something about him that made them curious? Was it a natural human affinity? In the park, at any point, people come and go, and yet there is a sense of bond that prevails — people seek peace and park themselves, and maybe that’s why the place is called a ‘park’; and in that search for peace, the strangeness melts into a sort of bond — a sense of affinity that brings people toward each other. We don’t know this, but if one goes to a park, we see those figures in the fringe loitering in circles, maybe just wanting to talk to a stranger. The poet answers this question in the next stanza.
There was just this white halo
around your homeless soul
so people would come
and they’d go,
to your old bench.
‘There was this man who stayed there for a long time — ah, on that old park bench. He is gone, but there is something about his absence — the remnants of his presence — a white halo, a little scent of homelessness, the remains of loneliness, rejection, fatigue, the weariness of life lived, the signature of elements, now long gone, are still hanging in the air, on the wood and around the bushes. The bench is a storybook and people like to feel and experience stories — the story of the homeless person, now gone.
Relieved of a burden,
someone had heard them,
their souls were at peace
when they rested at ease,
with you on your bench.
The stories that float over the bench come to life in conversations around the past; now it is the time for their stories. They tell their stories to their companions, to themselves, and nobody in particular. Yet, as the stories are told, the burden of the narrating souls is relieved and they rest at ease, right with the homeless person’s remnants on the bench.
“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Everybody is a story waiting to be told. It does not matter if somebody is there to listen. A story out of a person is a life well lived; and an expression of immortality. That way, the missing person on the park bench is already immortal.
You left,
but you stayed,
and your bench remains,
so we speak and we pray,
at your holy bench.
The physical presence of the homeless person is gone. Yet, he stayed — his essence, his effervescence, his stories — all of that. And the bench — his earthly home — remains. So people sit ponder and pray, tell stories about their lives sitting on that park bench, which is almost like a holy altar. In his absence, under his halo, they all seek peace.
Poem 2: I and Bounarotti
A wooden bench, somewhere
In the middle of the road
The sun is setting,
And birds flew homeI and Bounarotti sitting here
Nibbling the words, bristles, and pain
Overlooking the logjam
Keeping the mayhem withinWith every passing moment
Sounding like a beating hammer
Thinking, when did we ever approve
The ridiculous vanity
Over the gay and sanity~Shweta Hitesh Joshi
Commentary on Poem 2:
The stage is set in the middle of the road, in urban Milan. I know the poet, so that must be a decent guess.
A wooden bench, somewhere
In the middle of the road
The sun is setting,
And birds flew home
A bench in the middle of the road is that oasis of calm amid the chaos. Just walk and sit on the bench and see yourself feeling calm in the mayhem. It is the place to pause and adjust, break the step and ponder, sit and tie a shoelace, or have a sip of coffee that you are carrying. The evening rush is on — people are tired and just want to get home. Even the sun and the birds, for that matter.
I and Bounarotti sitting here
Nibbling the words, bristles, and pain
Overlooking the logjam
Keeping the mayhem within
Notice the ‘I and Bounarotti’ rather than ‘Bounarotti and I’. The contemporaneousness of the struggle is key here — the poet places herself ahead of the maestro in their exploration of the naivety and vanity of these meandering humans, sidestepping their stagnant lives that overflow with pain and mayhem.
The pair (I and Bounarotti) sit there on the bench (a metaphoric pause amid the worldly chaos, I am now learning) and ruminate over the pain, bristles (indicating frustration or fear, like the ones on the cat fur), and words.
With every passing moment
Sounding like a beating hammer
Thinking, when did we ever approve
The ridiculous vanity
Over the gay and sanity
As she watches the crowd create wormy trails of random moments, running around to chase the vagaries of life, each moment increases the crescendo of chaos, ‘sounding like a beating hammer’. The realization that the chaos has no underlying purpose, but is about chasing ‘its ridiculous vanity’ hits her as the moments pass.
“How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at… color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.”
― Michelangelo
The world is full of these vain simpletons who appreciate the outward look, and chase material dreams, but do not look towards sane and gay lives, filled with spirit and movement.
If we were one of those simpletons, running around like a hamster on a wheel, chasing the pipedreams of materialistic prosperity, then this poem is for us. Let’s sit on the wooden bench right in the middle of the road and see this pitiful, vain drama unfold in front of us.
Poem 3: The Lady on the Bench
The Lady on the bench.
Sat And wondered why.
Would she be a planted grass?
Or would she get to fly?
For Fall was in the air.
The Leaves were changing soon.
In a rut, she felt stuck in place, but for her pace, the ducks had not a care!
For it was her food that got them by.
George, Fred, Ron, and Harry were all ducks that she had fed and named.
Then one day she felt a curiosity…
While sitting on her routine bench a question lingered long!
“For I had named these ducks some years ago, but never thought it strange.
Now I sit here clear, and wonder if the contra same?
I may have named them after friends but now I ask again,
When they look at me, what name do they say am I?”
Her mind was renewed she wrote the thought, and in a moment walked off quickly!
The ducks quacked aghast, where had the lady gone?
When spring had come and went and fell the same again…
The hungry ducks looked on by.
For the lady on the bench was gone, and they also wondered why.
Then one day a man appeared in place!
And tried to tell her story.
But in all the change and all the noise.
We couldn’t hear a word and he left in a hurry…
Commentary on Poem 3:
This is a story narrated in poetic form. I read it three times, and then it hit me — Kyle Castor’s poems are the first time around here, so it will take that time to get a sense of his cadence. This free verse poem has two layers — one is obvious and another, we should look for.
The Lady on the bench.
Sat And wondered why.
Would she be a planted grass?
Or would she get to fly?
For Fall was in the air.
The Leaves were changing soon.
The bench is a bastion of dreams and deliberations. The lady on the bench is possibly in a dilemma of identity too. On one side, she could ever fly ( chase her dreams), or was she just a planted grass, rooted near the park bench? The Fall is the season of change. Will it give her the chance to fly away, like the colorful falling leaves? The park bench and the grass are rooted in the park through the seasons, taking in the elements of rain, snow, and shine. Yet, they can’t fly… but she could. But would she?
In a rut, she felt stuck in place, but for her pace, the ducks had not a care!
For it was her food that got them by.
George, Fred, Ron, and Harry were all ducks that she had fed and named.
Ah! The ducks. Those apathetic, amphibian avians. George, Fred, Ron, and Harry — they got their names from her, but they never knew it. Well, they know her anyway, because she feeds them. They probably think that she must feed them that they are entitled to her food, and even that she is privileged to feed them.
“If you want to know about freedom, go watch ducks splashing around in water.”
― Jarod Kintz, Duck Quotes For The Ages
Spoilt creatures, these ducks. For them, she is as permanent as the park itself, for they see her stuck on that bench as a forever feature. But they display one thing she does not — they exhibit freedom in their splashing and swimming in the park pond; she just sits there wondering if she is rotting in a rut.
Then one day she felt a curiosity…
While sitting on her routine bench a question lingered long!
“For I had named these ducks some years ago, but never thought it strange.
Now I sit here clear, and wonder if the contra same?
I may have named them after friends but now I ask again,
When they look at me, what name do they say am I?”
Her mind was renewed she wrote the thought, and in a moment walked off quickly!
But things change, don’t they? The change came from within her. Curiosity arises…after those million moments of the dilemma between staying or flying away. Sometimes, the routine — the act of sitting on the bench and feeding these pompous ducks brings out the question. For these ducks, they eat, swim, flip their feathers to dry, and quack all day round — for them, their routine is freedom, as long as they are fed.
When she called ‘George, Fred, Ron, and Harry’, she was calling her friends — who weren’t there around her, but she had the ducks around the park pond that she fed and put their faces to her friends’ names. It was, in a sense, a coping mechanism for her solitude. Then, curiosity happened.
For humans, freedom is change — this change starts from within, that niggle like a pebble in the shoes, that grows slowly and becomes an irritant in the journey of the mundane. So the question that came to her mind was about if the ducks looked at her and remembered her by the name that they might have given. Well, they didn’t. For them, it was a usual day, with the lady uttering names, but feeding them. That was expected of her, right?
“The chains that break you, are the chains that make you. And the chains that make you, are the chains you break.”
― Anthony Liccione
Then, she breaks free. She realized that this vicarious life of treating ducks as friends did not make existential sense, and that was the moment she chose to fly away. She changed her mindset. The ducks were still there, lounging and expecting to be fed, as ever.
The ducks quacked aghast, where had the lady gone?
When spring had come and went and fell the same again…
The hungry ducks looked on by.
For the lady on the bench was gone, and they also wondered why.
The next time they felt the hunger pangs, they could not find the lady — the one they had assumed would be their feeder. Seasons went by and the lady was to never return. They were hungry. Now they began to wonder why the lady might have left — for feeding them was supposed to be her duty.
“And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.”
― Ally Condie, Crosse
The emptiness of the bench is a resounding reminder of the absence of a person — even the duck felt that — the furniture had been rearranged and their food was missing.
Then one day a man appeared in place!
And tried to tell her story.
But in all the change and all the noise.
We couldn’t hear a word and he left in a hurry…
This is more like an epilogue. The park bench got its new occupant, and he tried to repeat (tell) her story. The world had changed by then. The park had more occupants and the geese had become more boisterous, perhaps. So the man’s words were never heard in the din, and he vanished.
“A bench in the street can be a good writer because all kinds of material comes onto it like a heavy rain!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
Sometimes, the bench makes the story, and sometimes, it tells (or not).
The Park Bench Poems:
It is an afternoon, one of those countless afternoons. The scene is the same. The wet grass wave in the afternoon breeze. A crane flies in, and then another one walks tiptoed to catch a worm that might have floated up from the water that flows through the garden hose. A homing of grey pigeons dives and splatters the water noisily. The cranes look at them in frustration. The afternoon sun slides behind a lonely grey cloud — there are no rains today, just that little solace from the early February heat.
The trees are confused, it is not supposed to be hot this early on. Yet, they respond — nature adapts. The neem trees go first and start stripping their leaves off, getting naked for the summer heat. The afternoon breeze promises hope, picking up the petrichor of the leaking waters from the garden hose.
I sit there, reading these park bench poems on my phone and I smile. Life folds in, and I am a character in all of these poems. Aren’t we all, characters in our stories?
“There is only one way to understand a lonely bench in a park: Sit on it; watch whatever it is watching; listen whatever it is listening to! Sit in spring, sit in winter, sit in summer! To understand something deeply, you need to live its life!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
We leave behind a part of our lives on those benches. Perspectives, thoughts, views, scents, musings — all making stories for other strangers who follow us to read.
~Ashok Subramanian © 2024
