Naming the Unnamed: Reading Inheritance

by J. Rod Panneck
Poem: Inheritance
Poet: Becky Palapala

The poem Inheritance by Becky Palapala is an exercise in naming the unnamed and putting a finger on the untouchable. She begins by reminding us of truth, or as Pontius Pilate said, “Unchanging law”. Some parts of life are beyond our control or at least beyond the control of the common man. Things we each have to suck up to every day; speed limits, fishing limits, bank fees, etc. can drive a person to think of what one has control over and count those things precious. These truths are self-evident yes, but not without an ingrained almost organic existence within us. We realize we need rules and laws, we realize we want others to obey them but we strive at every turn to be the exemption to each rule, natural and otherwise.

The rules Ms. Palapala is talking about might be rules of the heart, rules of the brain and most often, the rules of spirit. We as sentient creatures desire understanding of all things we encounter and even as we look at these difficult issues of where we came from and where we might go next, we are fully aware that there are no answers, there have never been any answers and there never will be, until we reach our destination and many believe not even then. When we believe in a creed or a faith system we are often confused by the natural irregularities of any such manmade system. So even when “they assent to our manipulation” they are not fulfilling. We can look at our religion or our doctrine of political beliefs and try to come to grips with the inherent failings but we are too wise for our own good, we see past the surface level explanations of why democracy doesn't work or why justice is hardly blind. Seeing past these things we find ourselves caught in a never ending cycle of doubt and longing.

Speckless cities are still destroyed by the hand of an unknown god, good people die every day and we stand by and wonder why it wasn't us. We look around at the ever maddening non-logic that controls our universe, The basic structure is a branching off of purposes halved—and halved again; there is no reason to the preponderance of haphazard events that tell us where we are going next. The heart's headwater the center of our soul the median point of our being is spilt out in perfunctory perfusion not withstanding the need to look for answers but attaining little.

The search can not explicate itself, becomes moored in Gordian webs, inextricable from their source, the questions falling back on themselves and becoming more vague and cloudy even as we try to answer them. So then we have been damned by trees or damned by the very questions we ask, because we search we will never find, so it is better to never search. But none of this matters, the fact that we write and pose as writers, the fact that we try means little, the one maker of the universe be it a God or a collision or both does not care that we think, they only care that they are and that they were here first and that we are their creation or there accident— The river does not regret last spring, the maker does not care about the outcome only that whatever it is he was the impetus.

The central metaphor in this piece is the body. The body as the universe and the universe as the soul of man. The human body is the most complicated piece of life we are capable of putting a handle on as each of us knows our own body and can therefore see it as a far reaching and intricate system. We understand that our heart pumps blood to give oxygen to the cells, but we do not know each cell nor can we imagine something as simple as the rush of blood from our heart to our toes. Thus using this perfect example of how we know the stars but can not comprehend their being, we dream of heaven but cannot agree with even one other person of how it must exist, the author shows us that we are fooling ourselves into believing our knowledge and our reach is unlimited when in fact it is only in front of our face, if ever that far.

The author treads a fine line in her tone. She is at once detached, almost scientific as if speaking into microphone over a corpse and at the same time she is adamant, almost passionate as in the two phrases; again and again, speckless cities flood in the spring delta and the even more lucid So then, we have been damned by trees-- . This balancing act works and is in fact necessary when we consider the speaker is trying to define the coexistence of God's mercy and his terrible retributions. The tension in the language and tone is apropos of the natural conflict in every human heart. Can we define God? Can we understand anything greater then ourselves?

Overall, I would have preferred more specificity and less abstraction. A casual reader might have difficulty after a single pass to extract anything other then the obvious love of language that Ms. Palapala possess. The first three strophes could each benefit from a bit of steel girding to hang these lovely and compelling abstractions on.

Rod Pannek lives in Texas. His poems have been published
in Autumn Sky and have won honorable mentions for Poets.org
in the InterBoard Poetry Competition, September 2005.