Very felt, Max, and yes, relational, poignant even. Laughed at 'turtles all/the way down'. Like the progression (regression?) from the world to the past to the particular restrictive present.
I note your punctuational oddities, a particular propensity for the dash, even following exclamation and question marks. Is this a deliberate ploy, to indicate the pace of mind movements?
Bill
> On 5 Mar 2015, at 5:14 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Sunday at 1 is my time for study - one Carrie is instructor of a poetry group up at St Mark’s now I’ve dropped Vonne the life-writing instructor.
> At last Sunday’s class, one of the four women (men: two) said of my ‘Christmas Trees’ piece:
>
> It gives us plenty to see, but there’s not much that’s relational - trying to make out your partner there…
>
> I laughed, saying: when my wife hears this she’ll agree. Marilyn says to me: Don’t show me your poems about things, I want them to be relational.
>
> Went home and told this to Marilyn...
>
> So next morning with a great effort I began with a thing and… [best wishes from Max]
>
> The Globe
> for Marilyn
>
> Wandering Seattle idly
> on Pike - or is this Pine? -
> next to the tattoo shop
>
> and its welcome sign:
> No Pets. Must be
> 18 & Sober
>
> I pause with my dog
> outside the thrift store:
> for fifty cents - no more! -
>
> I should buy this globe,
> carry it home from
> the tea-trolley piled
>
> with sad remnants here,
> this out of date world -
> the late Soviet Union,
>
> colonial south-east Asia! -
> remember exotic
> French Indo-China?
>
> All colored nicely
> before it faded,
> which adds to its charm.
>
> My hand is longer, larger
> and lumpier than these
> mottled Himalayas.
>
> Tibet! hello and
> goodbye. How well
> does it turn on its
>
> metal poles? - this relic
> of twentieth-century
> earnestness, left-over
>
> curiosity -
> creakingly, rustily,
> precariously. Still,
>
> you feel your power -
> let the whole world spin!
> What stable base is it
>
> fixed to? Turtles all
> the way down? Sadly,
> no, a tin disc almost
>
> heavy enough to
> prevent disaster,
> not quite. World tilts,
>
> equator first, off
> and down - only I,
> quick-reflexed Atlas,
>
> clutch, clasp and lift it
> back to the trolley.
> Apocalypse not now.
>
> I see myself, loaded
> with it, puzzling the dog,
> entering our flat -
>
> Darling, look what we’ve
> brought home for you!
> a useful ornament.
>
> And hear her Not here,
> not now, not near me.
> Kitsch so bulky she
>
> fancies not one bit.
> I linger over my
> hemisphere, the South,
>
> relegated almost
> out of sight by the
> crowded busy North.
>
> Down under: Australia
> seems all desert, New Zealand
> two blobby islands -
>
> two towns, no harbors.
> In the scheme of things
> that’s all globe-makers
>
> could offer, back then.
> I can’t go home, wherever
> home was or is, unless
>
> it’s where she is for now
> in our tidy flat-earth flat
> all day today and some tomorrows.
>
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