Like it.
A
On 5 March 2015 at 08:08, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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 this out of date world -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.
> >
>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
'Undercover of Lightness'
http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
'Shikibu Shuffle'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
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