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fourthriver...


 

The possibility of writing

Printer's tray, Cuneiform Press postcard

 

Still struggling to form and finish the next post (following on from the post dated 2 September) I'm once again resorting to interpolating a poem here, complementary to the poem I published last month (23 September). In fact I see both poems, each a poem in progress, as two parts of a single, longer poem, or as two closely interrelated poems. As with the previous poem, I'll continue to work on this one here, in the more or less public space of this blog. In the spirit of the relationship between the two I've altered the title of the previous poem -- or provided a title: the September poem is now, "The possibility of memory", with the current poem titled "The possibility of writing".  I'll see where that goes. Meanwhile, I think that both poems are grappling with the writing process; with crafting, rather than with inspiration, since neither is inspired in the usual sense of that word.

 

The possibility of writing

 

[first line?]

A clutch of elk

A forest door

Light tilting against

A thickening sky  

The gloaming

Tentative then

      Flaring

Touching nose flank tail

Elk growling at low thrum

"Indefiniteness is an element

Of the true music"

      says Spicer

The poet

 

Dreaming

Riding

Bareback through the forest

I taste the trail in my mouth

And I think to write this down      

 

Walking the streets

Shadows stippling the sun

I'm a cotton weevil

Caught in a loose cotton weave

Unbuttoning one ear

I listen for the congregate elk

      

Chiseled from the glowing rod         

      heated shavings  

      swarming

Coalescing into letters

      clustering

      just enough

To make one sentence

      maybe

 

The press goes

Clacketyclacketyclack

Crowding my dream

Planetesimals whirr the dark

Seventeen billion

     aggregate spheres

Formed from superheated metal

Seventeen billion

      trees

In a red-shifting forest

Our names carved

      into this

      one tree

 

 

 

 

 

["clutch"?] of elk

rim of light

forest lane

printing press

etc.]        

 

 

 

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