Where cliff ends and sky
begins, I meet you. I meet
you where I want to--
under rocks, inside television
sets, on the eye of the needle
of the phonograph record while
Dollar Brand's piano rolls,
on the black spruce b-flat of the
unplayed piano. I meet you in
chimneys, in unmarked cars, on
the central incisor of Daniel Van
Dyke's open mouth. On the ocean
floor, I will meet you, with brine
and with gills. On the ocean
floor, we will speak of water and
darkness and when all there is
is water and darkness, we will not
mind. I will meet you in the center
of the glass eye where we will
see what glass sees.
We can meet here--
in the empty
cup,
in the sap
of the blue
spruce tree,
inside wild
guesses,
at the root
of the explosion,
between the
inhale and the
exhale.
But
if you call me,
I will not
come.
Your first non-human persona poem? "What Stillness Said"--I like the past tense there. When I read it first, I guess I didn't process the title because I was mystified after I finished it...and then caught the title again, and "click", all parts worked together. I like the ageless, dispassionate, almost cold edge to the tone...like stillness is angry at us because we don't pay it proper tribute.
ReplyDeleteThat bit about the glass eye is so weird and specific I think it fits that ambiguous category: "visionary". Only language could access and communicate this kind experience, I thought after I read that.
The characters too. The specifics. Rich and strange.
I did see some opportunities. Not that you have to pay them any mind, but... Here are some lines that seem like opportunities for something fresher, for a little careful tweak:
"at the heart"
"in between the"
Those two. And the last line. I think the poem would read with more confidence and be more convincing without it. That penultimate stanza rocks things to a stop. Trust it!