Today’s the first anniversary of my Mom’s death—and it comes, as all the subsequent anniversaries of her death will come, one day after my son Brian’s birthday and six days before her own birthday. So Eliot was only half right about April.
Anyway, here are this week’s notebook jottings; they include one more or less finished poem.
The rivering wind’s
rush through pinewoods in late March,
their shadows groaning*
used to think I knew
now I know I know
damn near nothingand doubt even that
*
Just when you thought the world
had overlooked you, the agents
of certain powers set out,
your address in their pockets.
A day like any other, as it happens.*
a day when
everything
draws mein: into
the web
that shimmerswith promise:
so many threads
shining, so manypaths—although
at the end
of each:the spider
*
The Poet Tenders His Apologia In Terms
He Hopes His Son Will UnderstandI told him
I could trace my love
for poetry back
to a kids’ cartoon:
Rocky and Bullwinkle.Yeah right.
Really, I said.
Rocky the Flying Squirrel
and his sidekick Bullwinkle
J. Moose
find themselves
lost in a desert:
broiling sun,
sky a whitish
vacancy arched
over stones
and a scatter
of prickly
twisted cactus:
now they’re crawling,
their red tongues
drag the sand:
now a naked
dune rises, and
drawn by watery
visions they
straggle to the top:
nothing but more
bleached emptiness:
now the narrator
frets in his dramatic
golden tenor:
Our heroes looked out
over miles and miles
of miles and miles.See? I said.
He gave me a quick
pinched look
and shook his head.Poetry, I told him. Poetry!
Don’t forget to leave a “free poetry” comment in the comment stream to this post by the end of April!
Thanks for the kind comments, guys. And Robert, the merciful thing about poetry is that the unfinished may stay unfinished without anyone clamoring for it. I wonder, for example, how David Foster Wallace would feel about the release of "The Pale King"!
March and April are not shaping up to be good months for you guys. But at least your son's birthday is in the mix.
Like it all, Joe, except the part about losing your Mom.<br /><br />Be interesting to see how the unfinished poem develops, and how it might change, if you would show us that.<br /><br />Poetry! Poetry!<br />Yes, I see it<br />but then I am old;<br />my sight<br />improved with age.