Thank you Sue for your kind remarks and generous response.I am happier with
the poem than I was although I do feel a little lumpiness in continuity,
flow.
I envy you your faith and certainty, Sue, I do not question it. Right or
wrong I am resolved upon my own evaluation. It does not worry me and I find
no discomfiture in my position, it is as intellectually honest as I can
muster. The slight uncertainty is a little exciting. Despite this difference
we do respond to the same aspects of being alive and all that that means and
it is sufficient to the day. Thank you again my friend. Hand and heart
Arthur.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sue Scalf" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: New sub: A poem in search of a title.


In a message dated 06/25/2003 12:54:18 AM Central Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<<
 A poem in search of a title.

 A car passes down the wet road;
 light slides over my curtains.
 I watch the arrow fly across my room,
 then night resumes. The glow of numbers
 at my side, tells the long dark down to day.

 Fitful, I hear the soft insistence of my heart
 and tides of breath beat out their span,
 per second, per second.
 I shake my hand, deadened by my body’s weight,
 to feel the loosed blood thrill again.

 Its stone plinth, fast rooted,
 gnomon aligned to the earth’s tilt,
 the bronze dial turns towards the sun,
 measures and enumerates its unclouded passage,
 shadows the hours, the pulse of seasons- years.

 Flies butt and buzz,
 eyes flash, fail and dim,
 birds flit, clouds drift, sands shift,
 leaves flicker, grasses sway, seas lap
 and rivers run under the apparent journeys of the sun.

 A sere leaf taps my shoulder,
 a bird-abandoned bough quivers,
 Leaf- and petal-fall, moon in thrall,
 the wind’s melody stroked from swung chimes,
 all evaluate the same equations.

 When all I am is stilled,
 senses nullified, pitched into silence,
 I will no longer know these soft flickers,
 flights of time, nor mind the chiding of decay
 that moulders me to other lives. >>

You were apparently writing about this same theme back when you wrote this
that you still use and your language then was just as rich as it is now.
The
poem is a lovely thing that I would not want to tamper with.  The only thing
that bothers me is our differing philosophies toward death: your seeing it
more
in terms of oblivion than I do, for I see hope everywhere I look and an
affirmation of life in all of nature, seasonal return, new growth out of old
ground,
endless metaphors for resurrection and rebirth. But I don't fault your poem
for that.  I wonder though if  you could not refer in your ending to some
flicker that the eye does not always see; scientifically we don't see all
the
colors, certainly not ultra violets etc.  just as our ears do not hear all
the tones
(i.e., not the high-pitched ones my dog can hear).  Since we have so little
access to what is around us, we may not always understand what the eye sees
or
the ear hears.  Not here anyway.  Ah, well, Arthur, I am rambling.  I love
your poem.