On Perhaps the Truth Depends by Lisa Zimmerman
by Juan J. Morales
Hi, I’m Juan J. Morales, an assistant professor of English at Colorado College and a poet in Pueblo, Colorado, here for Poets on the Plains. Today I’m excited to share with you a poem by Lisa Zimmerman, titled, “Perhaps the Truth Depends.”
Liza Zimmerman teaches at the University of Northern Colorado and lives in Ft. Collins, Colorado, along our state’s Front Range and where it begins to unfurl toward the Great Plains. She also has dedicated herself to not only serving her own students at UNC, but she also coaches students for Poetry Out Loud school recitation projects and regularly teaches K-12 workshops.
Lisa’s community first mindset helps us understand her approaches in setting her poetry. Specific to this poem, the narrator walks her dog around a lake, and all the small activities hold them in awe of all the actions, noises, and sensory elements around them.
Zimmerman also riffs on the Modernist aesthetic of “no ideas but in things” that we see in the works of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. The objects come alive around us, opening our curiosity the way that walking the dog asks us to look closer and notice more even if we want to be on autopilot.
This ask for focus puts the world into perspective, and we follow the dog’s nose. According to PetMD, dogs have up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses and can smell up to 100,000 times better than humans. I love how this poem replicates the dog doing its best to take in as much of the overwhelming sensory details as possible in the surrounding world, giving us the wise advice to be “on focus.”
The poem’s use of couplets also mimics companionship as dog and owner walk on until leaving us to wonder not only about the desired fish, but also the symbolism of all things beneath the surface. With the ending, we embrace beautiful distractions that celebrate delightful mysteries instead of being hung up on finding truth.
Perhaps the Truth Depends
on a walk around a lake, said Stevens.
Perhaps my dog trotting ahead of me
on the path around the lake will find it
first. He’s got the whole world
in his nostrils. I think he’s on a mission
for the truth but then we’re both distracted
by a turtle’s splash in the green water
inside towering stalks of cattails
and the redwing blackbird’s notes sliding
down the ladder of its throat.
Perhaps the truth purrs in the engine
of a small plane overhead or the soft
silver ears of mullein leaves that stop me
around the curve. Maybe it depends
on focus—blue needle of a dragonfly
above black-eyed Susans,
the rustling whip of a garter snake
through waves of orchard grass
or perhaps in the way a blue heron
stills above the shadowy water,
the gleaming fish of his desire
just below the surface.
Used with Permission.
Thank you for being with us for Poets on the Plains. I’m Juan J. Morales, coming to you from Pueblo, Colorado.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father and grew up in Colorado. He is the author of four poetry collections, including The Handyman’s Guide to End Times and his latest, Dream of the Bird Tattoo, published by the University of New Mexico Press. Recent poems have appeared in The Laurel Review, Breakbeats Vol. 4 LatiNEXT, Acentos Review, terrain.org, South Dakota Review, Sugar House Review, and Poetry. Morales has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Macondo, Longleaf Writers Conference, and he has served as the editor/publisher of Pilgrimage Press. He lives in Pueblo, Colorado and is an Assistant Professor of English at Colorado College. https://www.unmpress.com/9780826367587/dream-of-the-bird-tattoo/
FEATURED POET
Lisa Zimmerman is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Northern Colorado. She is the author of seven poetry collections, four chapbooks, including Sainted (Main Street Rag 2021) as well as three full-length books–The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press), The Hours I Keep (Main Street Rag), and her debut poetry collection which won the 2004 Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award from Snake Nation Press. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in anthologies as well as magazines including Cave Wall, Florida Review, Poet Lore, Vox Populi, The Sun, SWWIM Every Day, Hole in the Head Review, and Amethyst Review, among other journals, and is the winner of Redbook Magazine’s Short Story contest. Lisa is a coach for the Poetry Out Loud high school recitation project and has taught writing workshops in K-12 classrooms in Colorado and Florida. She has been the poet-in-residence at several schools in throughout Colorado. She lives in north Fort Collins with her family. https://www.lisazimmermanpoet.com/
