Keeping Things Whole

Perhaps my favorite poem is rather sad.  It's called "Keeping Things Whole" by Mark Strand.  I read it in his book Selected Poems.

Keeping Things Whole


In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.


When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.


We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.


My interpretation of this is that the author is expressing the feeling that everything is natural and whole and connected EXCEPT FOR HIM.  He feels like the thing that is different.  In a field, he is "the absence of field"--the thing that doesn't belong, the stranger, the outsider.

He walks and he "parts the air".  As he moves, the air "moves in to fill the spaces" where his body has been.  As if nature were disturbed by his invasion.

He moves "to keep things whole" as if the "wholeness" has been disturbed by his presence and he must keep moving to allow the wholeness to return.

 The feeling of the poem to me is very sad, very alienated, but I think it perfectly describes how many of us often feel.  We feel that nature is "out there" and that we are "in here" in our brains, our solitary awareness.  We feel cut off, as if, in a field, we are "the absence of field".

This feeling that we are not part of the "whole" is based on an illusion.  Because we act on the world, we imagine that we are separate from it.  Because we can say "I", we assume that this 
"I" is a totally separate being.  But it is not.  "I" am as much a part of the field as the grass, the trees, the sun, and the wind.  I like to meditate because if forces me to stop, look, and listen.  And when I see things as they are, I realize that I'm not the "absence of field".  I am the field.