Stack Takeover: Mischa Willett. Over the next two months, we’ll be reading poetry from Mischa every week, including four poems published for the first time on this Substack. For an introduction to Mischa, read Ben Palpant’s interview with him here.
The Cold-Hearted Son Almost Speaks Up
by Mischa Willett
How long following one’s father’s major heart surgery is it appropriate to wait before bringing up life’s minor incendiaries and minutiae without appearing callous or unconcerned? As I understand it, he’d managed a blood clot in the Aorta, little demonstrator sitting in the highway of his heart, her squatting tying up traffic for blocks on end. Pretending I’m still filled with gravitas two weeks out though, once he’s begun a full recovery, is a bit beyond me. Gradually, the stuff of life trickles back, refilling an enormous lack thereof we’d cleared out of our days to make some room, an empty stage on which to play out a final bow he didn’t take; penultimate last act. But it wasn’t that! He came through! And now shouldn’t the song switch from dirge to dance? Televised, this would be the scene of the second chance, and our need to go close one, and catch our collective breath would be punctuated by a laugh track. Here, we might relax back into what individual normalcies we knew prior to the brace and bating of possible grief: to grow glad we have this dry meanwhile, if dull, and brief.
Mischa Willett (Ph.D.) is the author of two books of poetry, including The Elegy Beta (2020) and Phases (2017) as well as of essays, translations, and reviews that appear in both popular and academic journals. A specialist in nineteenth-century aesthetics, he teaches English at Seattle Pacific University.
Mischa, you describe very well the tension between the "oh, wow the end is near," and "oh, well maybe it's not."
Especially these lines,
"And now shouldn’t the song
switch from dirge to dance? Televised, this
would be the scene of the second chance,"
Thanks for giving us this glimpse via your poem.
Beautiful Mischa!