Echoes of an unfelt hour
4/11/2023 The day has gotten away from me
Much love,
Echoes of an unfelt hour
Con/Jur/d 4/11/2023
Considering the kind of life we’ve chosen to live “That’s not right,” they said, “poetry doesn’t need to be about any one thing” “I hate the word thing.” How long has it been since these thickets were thrown up? Since we became entangled? Maybe since the first burst of clarity, the knowing where those vines led. An example, requiring a footnote, Creeley’s been dead 18 years now, 20 years before he left without a forwarding address, except:
“, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.”(1)
We still remember his comment to us “Is it poetry?” planting a row of English Ivy we’d never be rid of, while we circled around an unfelt hour, shouting unasked and unanswered advice listening for the echo, skrying the shape of the thing unseen, unheard, untasted, untouched, unborn not subject to death or rebirth, we wanted it so badly, all poets do
grasping, clutching, wrestling
sometimes screaming
“Where were you when?”
“I didn’t write it for you!”
Another lie, among so many
The echo of a House Sparrow’s
complaint through leafless trees
their sap risen, through spring’s
open window through wondering
what we have been doing
where the morning has gone
reminds us
after our seeking, our divining
our wanting, the thing or
The Thing
if you want to be fancy
has never been anywhere else
(1) University of California Press, Robert Creeley, “I Know a Man” from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley, copyright © 1991
Con/Jur/d, 4/11/2023