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Walking to class through Tompkins Square, I see red roses in the brisk air. I’ve been thinking about the present because that is what we will be talking about in class and here it is, a blooming rose. Although we call four tenses “present” in English, there are only two that really are: the simple present, a general truth: I walk to class every day; and, if you called me on the phone and asked me what I was doing, I’d tell you in what some like to call the present progressive: I’m looking at roses. The present perfect (I have walked to class a thousand times), and the present perfect progressive (I have been looking at roses up to this second) are the present, but with a past.
Five verbs help the present: do, does, am, are, and is. When
the teacher walks to class
the helping verb does is in the sentence, although we don’t see it because it’s hiding behind the main verb, walk. Does isn’t completely hidden, however; we clearly see its letter s sticking out at the end of the base form, walk:
The teacher walks to class.
When we say no in English, the does appears:
The teacher doesn’t walk to class.
Notice that the helping verb does takes on the negative, not the main verb, walk. Walk doesn’t do the work, does does.
When we ask a question in English, the does also appears as the first word in the sentence:
Does the teacher walk to class?
An affirmative sentence in the simple present does show does when it’s emphatic:
No, honestly, the teacher does walk to class
but usually “the teacher” just “walks to class” with the helping verb does hiding with its “s” sticking out behind the main verb walk like, as the grammarians like to say, the tail of a mouse.
The main verb walk has three principle parts: walk, walking and walked. The present uses two of these parts: walk and walking, but not the participle walked, which you do see in the past and the future. I’m approaching Houston Street. I’m going to have to concentrate while crossing that busy thoroughfare where the cars go every direction. So let me be here now and not think about the present—Ha! I just thought, “Well, of course, you can use walked in the present if the sentence is passive:
That dog is walked by its owner.
Those dogs are being walked by a walker.”
But let me focus on crossing Houston or I most certainly will be killed. There’s always another thought. And now I must hurry slowly. Have a good morning.
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Sometimes the present is a street to cross and sometimes it’s a flower. Here is a sonnet with a flower in it. Does it go without saying that writing is always, when it is heard or read, present?
…Amaryllis
…On a sad day of losses big and small
…someone left a flowerpot in the hall
…that wasn’t money or plenty of time
…but if I wanted it the thing was mine
…alive for sure because hint of a leaf
…sharply and green was beginning to peek
…out of the moss like the point of a knife
…pushed out of the earth by the Hand of Life
…if life were a hand and it held a knife
…but not to slash my throat—No life was kind
…at a closed door in a shadowy hall
…a little thing but I could have it all
…this amaryllis to be. Happiness
…was free and up to me and always is.
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Here is a poem I wrote many years ago in another country that has to do with the present. There are some flowers in it.
…On painting
…“Painting isn’t filling in the spaces
…made by penciled lines premeditated
…but’s existing as I touch
…on the canvas with my brush
…the woman there below
…hanging out bedsheets that blow
…among geraniums’ red explosions
…about her hips.
…In a moment do we see?
…Life’s happening so quickly
…I think I remember it
…but push, smear color till I show
…right there hung up on the wall
…what is finished yet will change
…each time you look.”
…While you talk I take off my beads
…to closely examine the delicate seeds
…blue and amazing strung on a string
…I bought today from an Indian.
…You put down your brush, touch at them too.
…Your fingers touch me, my fingers touch you.
………Popayan, January 1973
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