Moment Uncovered Is — Summary

Rhoda ClarkContemplative

No use looking now I'm gone to BEING coverings left in heaps on the floor/sandals shot like stars across the room no use looking there mostly it was lies/no matter now yesterday's time falls heavy at my feet poised uncovered trembling at the peak of sharper pyramids than these invisible without my time IS IN BEING ENOUGH not now digging relics in a future blasted out of infinite the moment winged without lies uncovered IS

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The speaker announces that they have already left. "Don't look for me," the opening seems to say, because the self you'd find has moved on "to BEING." What remains is a scattering of discarded "coverings," clothes and sandals flung across the room like stars. The speaker admits that most of what those coverings stood for "was lies," and that it no longer matters.

The mood moves from release to a kind of shaky exhilaration. The speaker stands "uncovered" and "trembling," exposed but alive, while the past hangs heavy at their feet. The pyramids and "relics" suggest that we often spend our lives digging through old time or building monuments to the future. The speaker rejects both. The capitals in "IS IN BEING ENOUGH" read like a hard-won realization, and the last lines, with the moment "winged / without lies," feel light and honest. The poem's point seems to be that the present, stripped of pretense, is all we need.

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