> Hello Bob,
            Many thanks for your comments on this one. The ideas and images in this poem have been brewing in various forms for quite a while and may well not be done yet. It´s interesting that you mention the ending as that´s the most recent addition and I can understand that it may feel tacked on., that and the question ( "Could I rise and step out....etc) that leads up to the final line. I suppose I did also hope that these lines would integrate into the whole poem and work together with ideas and images that appear throughout, but it is true that I am known as a very hopeful person, as well as a gardener. I wondered if the lines might contribute to the sense that the subject of the poem is substituting the life of the mind (fantasy, dream, onanism) for real experience....well, it is a long way to hope, isn´t it? There´s still time to brew, though.



Best wishes,   Mike


> Lähettäjä: Bob Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
> Päiväys: 2004/04/27 ti PM 10:36:58 GMT+03:00
> Vastaanottaja: [log in to unmask]
> Aihe: Re: At Dawn
> 
> Hi Mike
> (& all else who’re reading - horticulturally or not!)
> I think all this about the orchid is interesting – but isn’t getting to the 
> problem I have with the poem…
> I’m feeling more disappointed by how the poem ends. These wet feet in this 
> grass! If one picture’s symbolic then what do I make of this other and 
> “nah…” I’m not impressed… (It both feels like a line slotted on to end the 
> poem, yet it feels as if I ought to be getting something more than: "Oh yes, 
> this is where real orchids - not metaphorical orchids - grow!")
> It might be that the piece gets itself filed away and something re-emerges 
> in years to come in just a line in another poem – a line like: “he/she 
> dreams of orchids then wakes” or “The sun rises. An orchid blossoms. He 
> wakes.” may not reveal the writing history behind its deployment but who 
> cares?
> Bob
> who’s got, and used, often with amazing results, lines and images from poems 
> that would never have swum for any shore - or blossomed from a garden's 
> belly - on their own.
> And who’s just read (in a newspaper article someone’s handed to him today) 
> that Tony Harrison’s got a whole room in his house in Newcastle full of 
> notebooks with jottings of not-yet-poems!
> 
> 
> > > > At Dawn
> > > >
> > > > I never wanted this, the heart pumping,
> > > > blood punishing the veins in thin wrists.
> > > >
> > > > The skin below my ribs parts and tears
> > > > and the orchid pushes its silky stem
> > > > at the wound´s livid lips,
> > > > stretching flaps of flesh
> > > > into a red-raw O.
> > > >
> > > > Orchis raises his headbud,
> > > > dislodging cells like grains of soil,
> > > > rippling my belly and I cannot look
> > > > away, though the starting day lights
> > > > the vegetable world outside my window
> > > > and streaks the dawn sky.
> > > >
> > > > Could I rise and step out, barefoot,
> > > > on the cool grass beneath the trees?
> > > >
> > > > I lie back on my pillow in single
> > > > contemplation of the orchid blooming
> > > > below my heart, streaked purple and yellow,
> > > > lurid as any sky at dawn
> > > > and imagine the feel of cool grass on bare feet.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Mike
> > > >
> > >
> 
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