Thought I would share a recent poem revision. I always find the rewriting and revising process to be an enjoyable, and often surprising, enterprise. Though I am aware of the admirable theory of "first thought, best thought", I find in poetry that that only applies to my work in pretty rare cases. Sometimes the first draft as it flows out onto the page is prefect, nothing need be done. But more often, after the poem has sat for days, weeks, years, I find that I can detect what I conclude are some missteps in the poem. After the initial inspiration, sometimes the ear needs to come back later to refine the sound, the flow, even the meaning.
In the example here, the first draft was written in my field journal long ago (winter 1998). I was teaching a Sierra Institute program in southern Arizona. We were backpacking for 9 weeks, and doing our academic work while camping out in the Sonoran desert. Here is the first draft: When the thing flew from a hole in the tall saguaro, he felt a wind that lifted the land from its far edge like a blanket, folded it over him both flat and round, day and night both included in the weave, and he went down under it not knowing what it was, and later he could never answer whether the thing that flew breathed fire or water. Okay, now here is the recent revision: When the thing flew from a hole in the tall saguaro he felt a wind that lifted the land from its far edge like a blanket folded the whole size over him sky first dirt and rock second and he a fleck of color pressed beyond guise such that later he could never answer whether the thing that flew loved him in particular or just was passing through. Now this revision is recent enough that I could very easily decide in a few days, weeks, months, whatever, to change it back or change it into something else, but for the moment, I like the changes. Though it sticks faithfully with the starting image (something flying from the saguaro), it takes the consequences of that event differently, and I think with a little more detail, and a little more of the essential mystery.
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Setting sun ebbs on eastern slope
and line of shadow rises like dark water forcing forms of day to go under. I will sleep, I will dream I will drift down as creature browsing sunken architecture of ship. No one knows when it sailed or on what oceans. It has cabins, corridors metal-hinged chests dagger-locked. Some say moon lost inamorto on that ship – swept off bow when mutinous wave broke sudden. Again and again from heaving froth he called but course was set and her knuckles gripped white the gunwales of stern. In pale morning she went below lifted his shirt from the heaven of bed hung it in dark confine of closet. If dreaming ever bring you to that ship beware the smell of spices, beware the glimpse of her shimmering leg. And pray thee note the scattered skeletons of them who sought that inmost bed fancied they could don that smoldering shirt. Once between then and forever the dogwood blossom passed out of knowledge like sea foam escorted by night currents and whether by deprivations or extravagances no one noticed but kept on in their ways in which the white petals poised unassuming on forested hillsides did not play part and no one no longer commended them with eyes and touch so they were left to guard within themselves their own quintessence yet one woman on the dark shore threw out fine-tuned nets for sea foam her house of driftwood refuged the forgotten things though she herself was such choosing long nights with the vanishing tides and wondering whether there were any words other than ones for farewell. Reasons to cry will always
slide down stems of plants as though the light that shines answers to earth's thirst. Like grazing animals some sadness never leaves this field of green rooted as it is in aromatic rot of clouds and leaves. You have lain in places where I have never wept. If told now I had three years I would lace them round your ankle and follow where you tiptoe along the edge of bearing. The bird flew into his mouth
as though it were the opening of a cave circled three times round the first chamber before dropping into the second and third then plunged down swiftly and finally out through the bottom of his foot and he could see all the root hairs of the trees lit for that second like lightning and then he was standing again, in daylight the lingering leaves of the aspen were yellow though the last season he could remember was spring and when he coughed, a single feather the color of chestnut and honey issued into the air and he followed it, because that was simplest and he liked how it wafted so quietly through the first falling snow.
So far in this poetry blog, I have been sharing what probably would be called "nature poetry". Most of my poems I would happily allow to be thus categorized, and it's true that the overwhelming majority of my poems are written while out on the earth, usually out on the wild earth encountered during a backpacking trip. I like to think that added to "nature", however, there are some "contemplative" qualities, some "archetypal" qualities, perhaps even some "existential" or "cosmological" qualities.
But through the years, I have also enjoyed doing some writing that is more closely allied to the human social realm (I haven't always been a hermit!). For example, there is a cumulative collection of poems about being a father, and there is also a collection about being a lover. I thought today I'd do "something different", get a little more intimate in the human realm, and share a poem from the love collection. Free And so it is foolish to ask where is it now what we had or what you and he had or what anyone once was when they were not who they are now because even that slips away before our skin barely touches it. Your smell is soft as water and the cloths you hung to wall this midnight tent could be mountain lakes they are so still. Your belly pools with candlelight and soon a fine panting of moisture has risen to your surface everywhere at once it shimmers from your lips and chest and if ever there were dark trees their height does not impinge here. Swimming, swimming this is a bath of shadowless moon. And now over us you have hung a ceiling drape of stars. If one by one they fall, no matter – this night will go on, shoreless and free. I have recently returned home from a week solo in the White Mountains of California. What a place! (see photos) Terma in White Mountains
After passing rain thigh-high sagebrush startles into fragrance. Between boiling clouds a crevasse of blue – one world opens to another. Came down chute of shale shards sounding whispered singing old women twisting fibers out of cave smoke and starlit air. At bottom green grass, water trout color of blood and twilight mixed. Without hands or words wafting in clean presence. Note: In Tibetan tradition, "terma" means "hidden treasure", and refers to teachings planted long ago for later rediscovery. This is a poem from 1999, that I took a look at again today, tinkered with for a while, until it came to the form pasted below. I didn't even remember the poem when I pulled it out, but still, no surprise, I find in it some of the consistent themes I seem drawn to when I write. Nature for sure, some sort of orientation toward an archetypal feminine, a bit dreamy as though leaning toward faery tale, and an attention toward expansive states. So mysterious that for each of us our creativity moves of its own toward certain moods, tones, images.
Well Met If she meets you in the meadow watch the way her feet bend the grass and if the stalks lean primarily west go that way because it’s favorable and look at nothing too closely but listen for the story that her moving legs tell from inside everything. Remember that the trees are witness to more of her days than we will know and if passing the redwood she touches its bark note with which finger and then bring the same of your own subtly to lip and if you taste the tree’s tenor that’s favorable and now you must lose feet downward and from top of head get lost in lift because the world is about to break open in its middle the startled deer will bound and if she says to you look an arc of Glory is in its leaps then that is favorable because you know at last that you and Another are celebrating the same earth. This is another revision of the day, a poem that sat untouched for a decade and then came to life again. First draft and now this draft are quite different. I think this draft retains some of the energy of the younger man that wrote it, but hopefully it is enhanced by the more refined ear of the now (hopefully!) more mature man.
Antler and Acorn A deer antler and an acorn so little to find on ground and yet the full import of world spills out of them just as the river of autumn making quiet way through escort of boulders is cast primordially out of what cannot be seen not even when the woman stands alone in night meadow unafraid of anguish, or when the first light of daybreak washes over far slope of oak everything -- like tears and the round arms of the moment -- falls into crevices that only fingers released into death can feel not the cold death but the other one the death that's running now through dry grass under trees moon whipping through branches like a sickle it's a hot running, a can't-get-enough running but it's also a standing still a swoon into what was never left and all the while by the river, alder leaves are reflecting green and brown in a pool that could be her eyes or her eyes could be the pool and into them I am forever looking to see an acorn that fell, an antler that fell a night that fell through the birth veils of oblivion and died running in a morning that never wasn't. |
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July 2017
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