Friday, 7 September 2007

Persevering and Other Things

Persevering with Charles Wright's Scar Tissue has paid off; as with many a poetry volume, a gem or two may be found here or there. 

The Woodpecker Pecks, but the Hole Does Not Appear

 It's hard to imagine how unremembered we all become

 How quickly all that we've done 

 Is unremembered and unforgiven,

                                                                  how quickly

 Bog lillies and yellow clover flashlight our footfalls,

 How quickly and finally landscape subsumes us,

 And everything that we are becomes what we are not.

 This is not new, the orange finch

 And the yellow and dun finch

                                                       picking the dry clay politely,

 The grasses asleep in their green slips

 Before the noon can roust them,

 The sweet oblivion of the everyday

                                                                  like a warm waistcoat

 Over the cold and endless body of memory.

 Cloud-scarce Montana morning.

 July, with its blue cheeks puffed out like a putto on an ancient map,

 Huffing the wind down from the northwest corner of things,

 Tweets on the evergreen stumps,

                                                                    swallows treading the air,

 The ravens hawking from tree to tree, not you, not you,

 Is all the world allows, and all one could wish for.

                                                                              ~ Charles Wright

And the last verse from a poem called Pilgrim's Progress

 In the end, of course, one's a small dog

 At night on the front porch,

                                                   barking into the darkness

 At what he can't see, but smells, somehow, and is suspicious of.

 Barking, poor thing, and barking,

 With no one at home to call him in,

                                                                  with no one to turn the light on.

                                                                       ~ Charles Wright

Yes, it was worth the slog through.  And, yes, it's probably time to pick it back up and start all over again.

When is a blog a journal?   When no one posts responses?  Hmn?

Back to the tour through back issues of Lilliput.  This time it is number 118, which was a broadside of the poet M. Kettner, entitled Highku.  A decidedly skewed take on the haiku form.   The out-of-body experience as prosody ...

#700

 high:

 aerial surveillance of self

 patent leather reflecting sun

# 795

 high:

 ocean breeze

      on a crate of oranges

 

#729

 straight all day:

 tar balls floating in water.

 dried bread crust behind the couch.

 

#511

 Secanol:

 Ping-Pong ball caught in a vacuum hose

 parking tickets unpaid

                                              ~ M. Kettner

 

Next time, homage to Issa - I  hope.   Or, maybe Whitman.  Or not.  Hmn.

Posted by donw714 at 16:34 EDT | Post Comment | View Comments (1) | Permalink
Updated: Friday, 7 September 2007 16:37 EDT

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