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Poet, Artist and co-owner of Lasting Images Photography

Friday, March 05, 2010

My brain cells are fried

What WAS the name of that lake in Canada on our 3rd poets' summit???

I wrote this one after that trip and dedicated it to Ernest, Pat, Sonja and Carol F.

Poets Should Not Wed Poets


In Santa Fe, all the downtown buildings

are pink adobe. Some two-story

geometrics with arched windows, some--

like the McDonald’s--

squat, rosy boxes beside logo-bearing signs.

It’s all very picturesque at first,

so visually poetic.

But I wonder do the buildings tire

of each other,

search in vain for steel and glass

or a tiny white cottage,

even a rusty mobile home?

Balance.


Balance beside a Canadian lake,

those who speak

and those who listen.

Moving waters

and the stone grottos they lap against.

Silent cedars

and the bears that prowl amongst them.

Milky moonlight

and the coffee-black sky that accepts it.


Poets should not wed poets,

should not struggle with metaphors

for garbage night.

Much better to tune ears to casual wisdom

and write it down

without fear of infringement.


3 comments:

petergarner said...

Maybe this will jog your memory. :D

Cameron Lake

You hear the jackhammer
punctuation of a pileated woodpecker,
loon laughter, startle sunlight
over the horizon.

Rattlesnake coils invisible;
black bear crosses your path—you don’t see,
eye straying to tree root, turquoise water.

Delta-winged figments strafe,
harry until everything,
nothing, is bears and snakes:
a return to Precambrian granite.

Voices echo through cedars
darkening the far shore
and inverted exclamations of wild rice.

Judy Clem said...

Thanks! I simply could not remember the name . Lots of words are getting away lately.

Recently i could not conjure up "counterintuitive"......I stumbled around trying to get it back and finally said "I can't think of the word I need. It means something like counterlogical....I know that's not a word..it's not it...but it is something like that."

Geez

Judy Clem said...

Loved reading that one again btw.