Buried in sand or drowning. For the time being at any rate, the last of the series Reflections and Shadows.Since last March I have through some sort of block failed to respond to Lucy's question "Where would you be if not in this place?" I tried, reader, I tried. That is until a few days ago when I managed to squeeze out, as from an exhausted toothpaste tube, a sort of squiggle, which I hesitatingly submit to the testbed, a trial run. A query from Lucy results in several more stanzas and a complete version of a poem, which I hadn't realized, was incomplete. Her query meant that I looked deeper into what I was trying to say and found something as unexpected as it was unplanned; and to me at any rate reached back, in a satisfactory way, to an experience and an image long buried in my memory.
Now, as I enter another year of my life, and as cold, short days take charge, planting bulbs - tulips and alliums - as I do today, seems to be a bold exercise in optimism, or selflessness.
5 comments:
A birthday? Congratulations, Plutarch, have a happy day with many many more creative and lovely years ahead!
I was pleasantly surprised to find your poem earlier and truly enjoyed it -glad to see you and lucy are taking it up again.
By the way, our daughter and family will soon be moving out of London to a little village not too far from Tunbridge Wells. We hope another visit to the UK will work out sometime next year.
Wishing you a very Happy Birthday!!
May be last of your photo series, but certainly not the least. Have enjoyed them all!! They will be missed. Now can't wait to see what is next.
I thought September... do you have an official and another like HM?
Another reason why the champagne's on me. Perhaps a second bottle? There's no sense of strain in the Compasses poem, nor the impression of anything grafted on. One point I wish to quiz you on is using lines that rhyme some of the time - not that I think there's any reason why not. I'm interested too in this collaborative technique. You did guide me with the villanelle but but that was more a student/teacher relationship; what you appear to be doing in Compasses seems more grown-up.
Birthday? Sorry it is in September. My reference in context was to the fact that I am still at or near the beginning of another 12month period which is marked by an age-label.
The cooperation grew I think out of a simple idea. Also, originally, now I remember, out of a Qarrtsiluni project on the theme "changing signatures". It evolved and probably still is evolving. I don't know what Lucy thinks.
In this poem I allowed the rhymes to take over a bit. At first I tried to avoid rhyming all together. Then I thought that rhymes might help search out what was at the back of my mind. In the end what I found dictated the form, and as the form didn't set out to be anything of an established nature, I felt happy about what emerged.
Post a Comment