Soiled smock of day’s end tossed
heavenward, spread like finger-painted gull,
floats, held by body-heat thermal,
kept aloft only so long, descends
as it must. Eyes linger on its outline, form
shifting as memory takes hold—now white,
now black, nameless glow—arms spread,
wingspan of featherless bird in flight.
Colors of eclipse of greatest moment, natural
mimesis: shape of man (imago Dei)
occludes sunlight as the martyr attempts recollection.
Ink stains hands and imprints the brain—
white smock turned grey as sleep
convinces mnemon to yield in due season.
I don't usually say anything about my poems, but I have a few things I'd like to mention about this one. First, I know it needs some revision, but, hey, what doesn't?
ReplyDeleteThis poem is really my homage to the poem from which my blog gets its title, Robert Frost's "After Apple-Picking." An echo of Frost's opening for his poem ("My long, two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree / Toward heaven still"), my opening line imagines the close of a day with the tossing of one's "smock" into the air where it sort of takes on the form of a bird. From this point, the poem really is, in my mind, about the instability of memory, which, for anyone who knows me, is close to my heart :) The rest of the poem is really a series of variations on this theme, concluding with a possible play on the word "yield," which could either mean "to give up" (as in time of harvest) or "to halt" (as we sometimes think of the word in the vulgar sense associated with the inappropriate action one might take at a "yield" sign on the road). I am dissatisfied with the last half of the sestet. Where does the ink come from? I know why I thought of it, but I don't do a very good job of connecting it with the rest of the poem. I'm not totally sure it would work even if I were able to connect it better.
Now that I have committed the major atrocity of commenting on my own poem without being asked, I will go to sleep.
See, it's so interesting when poets comment on their own poems, because they see such different things, or expect such different drives in their poems.
ReplyDeleteI would not have said Frost.
More like: hopkinshopkinshopkins!
(b/c such RIFE SOUND and LOVELY NOTES:
ReplyDeleteOf the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
[...]
O my chevalier.)
Hopkins is always bound to be hanging around my poetry somewhere. "The Windhover" is one of the few poems I've memorized. Very complimentary of you, thanks!
ReplyDeletei have no idea what you specifically were attempting to get across to the reader when talking about the ink on the hands but I know I made enough of my own inferences/"connections" that it made some sense to me...
ReplyDeletea lot of good that does you knowing that though><