on 2/3/05 6:12 PM, Stephen Vincent at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> (This one has the right line breaks!)
>
>
> Therefore to walk casually and beautifully, each step a grace-note:
> not a likely combination, but it is spring: blue sky, pink and white
> blossoms, the scarlet tinged Magnolia blooms, the pollination, the
> multiple nature-given, the air a little lighter: a table-saw, its slight,
> twirled shriek, the new construction, a hammered rhythm, pock-
> pock-pock: the roll, hydraulic-brake trolley stop, track squeak:
> morning slant-shadow, the silence, last night's showered torrent,
> each tight feathered, new Robin red breast on the wire, love of,
> plunge for the wet earthworm: keep walking, eye the register, table-
> saw shriek again, write it down hot, wring out the red blood, deliver,
> sort to a new song, pock-pock: the multiple, driven possibility.
>
> Stephen Vincent
> Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
Myself, Vincent, I'd set it out with short lines and white spaces, so packed
with perception is it, my reading pace becomes deliciously slow...
yrs, Max R
Now my latest is a short-line snap, or should they be long lines?
Phalaenopsis
hard to say, easy on the eye;
alternatively, Moth Orchidı.
(Such a myth-y moth I
couldnıt have invented.)
The nurserymanıs sheet
that comes with it says:
fal-en-OPP-siss, but
doesnıt that omit an aı?
Oh, youıre thinking mediaevalı?
(the aı is silent,
like the pı in swimming
my late Dadıs favourite
piece of punning.)
The flowers have a fine-china
perfection; you canıt
believe they sprang from soil
indeed half their roots,
as if despising it, dandle round
above their potıs ground.
(Reading on, Iım pondering
this: Over watering
may cause root loss.ı
Also: Never over pot.ı)
They look back at you, faces
like poised pedigree cats
wearing the merest pouts:
we know weıre exquisiteı.
Value for money, absolute.
Properly placed out of the sun,
they pose like a cluster
of lamps low-powered,
coolly spreading calm,
fragile but enduring
putting to shame
irises, daffs and the rest
who haste away so soonı
till, months after being installed,
first one moth-bloom crinkles,
droops and falls
(over-watered? under-watered?)
then another and another;
fal-en-OFF their fall silent
as the pı in swimming.
The trouble with most flowers is:
however much eye contact
you offer them, they give back
scarcely any, except these
I stared admiringly,
they stared back,
and found me wanting.
6.40pm, Wed 2 March 05
Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
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