(no subject)
I gave blood today! W00t.
Also I rather like my other poem for this week, which was a random "spirit of place" poem I wrote in about half an hour. My classmates seemed to enjoy it too, which was heartening.
What Is Green?
On TV, where the real people lived,
summer was green, with a skyful
of trees in which children could climb
and the eye could hide. Everything clean,
washed in water that snaked away
in a big lazy river. Kids rode bikes on streets
with names like Second and Sycamore, names
to channel them back to their own piece of green.
My street was not a street. It had a sign: Primitive
Road. But that was not its name. It meant to say,
this dirt road will stay dirt. The state
does not intend to fix it. We didn't even name it.
Stay away. That dirt road, to us, meant dust, inevitably
getting in your window and under your skin.
We kids played in the dust, in the mud
when we could, throwing the rocks that grew
in our yard, the same color as a rattlesnake.
We had green a few days a year. In late afternoon
loomed a dark swollen sky, and it looked like water
in the distance, horizon shivering in the heat.
Then the rain. First a drop, then the plague
of locusts. First dry, then drowning.
No cozy rainy day, but an augury, sometimes
an emergency, when the road flooded
and we were stuck in nowhere. After the anger,
the clean, the green, but as I say, it was gone
in a day, barely seen and seeming unreal.
I got an idea tonight for another poem that would be based on Rilke's Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. I love the description of Eurydice in that poem, how Orpheus is so close to her and loves her so much and yet she has become a part of the Underworld and can't really see him anymore. And when he, in his weakness, ultimately fails her, she doesn't even understand what he was trying to do. I thought I might try to write something from Orpheus's point of view. That's probably way too ambitious, but what the hell...
Also I rather like my other poem for this week, which was a random "spirit of place" poem I wrote in about half an hour. My classmates seemed to enjoy it too, which was heartening.
What Is Green?
On TV, where the real people lived,
summer was green, with a skyful
of trees in which children could climb
and the eye could hide. Everything clean,
washed in water that snaked away
in a big lazy river. Kids rode bikes on streets
with names like Second and Sycamore, names
to channel them back to their own piece of green.
My street was not a street. It had a sign: Primitive
Road. But that was not its name. It meant to say,
this dirt road will stay dirt. The state
does not intend to fix it. We didn't even name it.
Stay away. That dirt road, to us, meant dust, inevitably
getting in your window and under your skin.
We kids played in the dust, in the mud
when we could, throwing the rocks that grew
in our yard, the same color as a rattlesnake.
We had green a few days a year. In late afternoon
loomed a dark swollen sky, and it looked like water
in the distance, horizon shivering in the heat.
Then the rain. First a drop, then the plague
of locusts. First dry, then drowning.
No cozy rainy day, but an augury, sometimes
an emergency, when the road flooded
and we were stuck in nowhere. After the anger,
the clean, the green, but as I say, it was gone
in a day, barely seen and seeming unreal.
I got an idea tonight for another poem that would be based on Rilke's Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. I love the description of Eurydice in that poem, how Orpheus is so close to her and loves her so much and yet she has become a part of the Underworld and can't really see him anymore. And when he, in his weakness, ultimately fails her, she doesn't even understand what he was trying to do. I thought I might try to write something from Orpheus's point of view. That's probably way too ambitious, but what the hell...