Aside from enjoying it as the others did, Max, I think your break from the 3 line stanza works well here. these couplets, then staggers, carry the tone well...
Doug
On Jan 28, 2014, at 11:58 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> My posthumous poem
>
>
> singular or several, found
> variously in notebooks, and
>
> emails self-addressed
> or not sent, as if there'd
>
> always be time, expresses
> hesitant surprise -
>
> never in a long life any sort
> of believer - so much a sceptic
>
> it seemed a disability - doubting
> faith also doubting doubt
>
> Well, I was only here on
> sufferance
>
> I was here only on
> sufferance
>
> I was here on
> sufferance only
>
> The older the tree
> deeper and darker
>
> the lesions on its trunk
> where limbs broke
>
> and were removed
> thresholds to the
>
> interior whence
> life welled up once
>
> now monuments
> to experience
>
> Elm, deep in your dark
> cavity, receive the contents
>
> of this my opened
> upended crematory urn
>
> Many a slip between
> mind and fingertip
>
> mind and lip
>
> unbeknownst
>
> failing sight
>
> faltering step
>
> nobody's fault
>
> impaired vision
>
> time always short
>
> time a stop was put to it
>
> and so it was
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Latest books:
Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
Recording Dates
(Rubicon Press)
Swept snow, Li Po,
by dawn’s 40-watt moon
to the road that hies to office
away from home.
Lorine Niedecker
|