Here’s my poetry offering for Random Acts of Poetry at HighCallingBlogs.com this Friday. I recorded a reading of it with a little bit of commentary because I believe strongly in the oral tradition of poetry that goes back to Beowulf and all those early English works. (The poem begins one minute into the audio if you want to just skip straight to it.)
Special thanks to Ann Voskamp and Erica Hale for participating this week. If you participated and I missed it, be sure to let me know! In keeping with Ann’s offering this morning this is a lament of sorts.
Where We Live
We have dull seasons
like our dry dead summer.
Autumn regreens the evergreens.
Nothing falls here until spring
when new leaves push off the old ones.
They flake like overripe pages,
gray and brittle and wrinkled.
Raking them creates mounds
of color-drained vegetative corpse.
In Boston, people jump into bright piles
red and orange and yellow. People here
see death, and they close the door,
turn up the air conditioning.
{ 10 comments }
I think we all do, a little bit…close the door, and turn up the air conditioning. Very powerful, very beautiful words.
Love it.
Though as you say, for whimsy it’s a bit dark. Like new leaves push off the old ones… kind of sinister. Still, isn’t tension a friend of poetry?
Erica, thanks for that comment.
L.L. dark whimsy is my special interest, I suppose.
I'm thinking, what makes a season exciting? Is it change? Color? The stuff people do?
Closing the door on a dead dry summer does sound pretty mundane. Maybe in such a place it means that people have an obligation to be more interesting behind closed doors …
Isn't good poetry the kind that lingers, calls you back again, and slowly lets you find words of your own?
Yours here did that. Hooked me. Brought me back. And now, finally, I have words to leave, an offering here.
What rang me?
It's different for each of us. Where we live, where we've come from, it shapes us in ways that makes it hard to hear each other. Too often I forget how it can be so very different for someone else from somewhere else — geographically, spiritually, personally.
Your poem grabbed me by the jugular and shook me a bit. And that last line? Brilliant. Is that how we deal with lament? Shut the door, turn up something to self-medicating, soothe?
Yes, your words keep lingering, Marcus….
Thank you….
Ann, what a marvelous way to describe the power of poetry– that which holds on to us, calls to us, and which we in turn hold on to and call back to in our own words. This reminds me of a set of verses from Proverbs…
Of Lady Wisdom it says in Proverbs 1:20, “Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.” Then in 2:1-3 it says, “My child…if you…cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding…”
Words as partnership. Poetry a very deep partnership indeed.
And can we have such partnership across place? A girl who grew up in the shadows of a forest, and one who flourished with her fingers in Canadian soil, and a guy who drifts on the rivers of Texas, and others too… many others? You give me hope that they can. Place defines us, yes, but maybe we can reach beyond our borders through the gesture of words.
I'm thinking about those new leaves pushing off the old ones the way a person in a boat pushes off the shore to begin a new journey; of course it could also be more sinister, like the way someone could push someone else off an edge in order to preserve herself.
In either case it is fascinating to consider the interplay between the old and the new, between life and death… an interplay that is often filled with both promise and sorrow… an interplay which is not so easy to shut the door on, since the process is inherent in existence itself.
Yes! Yes! Yes! (as someone who shares your weather & culture). I just read Seamus Haney's translation of “Beowulf” — fabulous. Why didn't I get it when I was in 8th grade? Probably because I was in 8th grade.
Oh man!!! I am so far behind!! I keep missing the prompts! I have a couple lingering poems, but they may be too edgey… It's been a rough couple of weeks.
you know what folks? Part of me enjoys just reading your banter. It makes me smile! : ) Like watching old friends reconnect. I NEED to get back here more!
Oh man!!! I am so far behind!! I keep missing the prompts! I have a couple lingering poems, but they may be too edgey… It's been a rough couple of weeks.
you know what folks? Part of me enjoys just reading your banter. It makes me smile! : ) Like watching old friends reconnect. I NEED to get back here more!
Comments on this entry are closed.