Self Portrait with W
One might claim a double victory, or after the Roman Empire’s fall, a reclamation
from the slurred “b” and its subsequent reduction.
Survival of the rarely heard, of the occipital’s impulse.
The oak’s crook performs a similar function.
Shielding myself from adjuration, I contemplate the second family
root, weighted in weapons, in Woden, in wood.
Not rejection, but acceptance in avoidance.
The Japanese homophone, daburu, bears a negative connotation.
Original language was thought to be based on a natural
relation between objects and things.
Baudelaire’s alphabet existed without “W,” as does the Italian.
The recovery of lost perfection is no longer our aim.
When following another, I often remain silent.
As in two, as in answer, as in reluctance, reticence.
We share halves – one light, one shadowed, but both of water.
Overlapped or barely touching, still we complete.
* * *
“Self-Portrait with W” originally appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait series, and was reprinted in my chapbook, The Circumference of Other, included in Ides, a one-volume collection of fifteen chapbooks published by Silver Birch Press and available on Amazon.com.
O at the Edges 
That is one good W
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Thanks very much!
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sWeet! An ode to W! Brilliant. In Spanish isn’t it “doble v?” Or am I remembering it incorrectly?
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I think your memory is working just fine. But what do I know?
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More than I!
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Hah! Fooled another one… 🙂
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without wending west away from the wise-bush, well done W-ing words into a verse. that was a terrible use of W’s by myself if i do say so.
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Ha! My attempts at replying to you in kind all sounded as if written by Elmer Fudd…
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You are NOT hafu or daburu… You are both an transitive and transitive verb with a little abstract noun-ness thrown in, You are turipuru (triple): fully American, with a sabi heart, and a mushotoku spirit (process, not form). Not Okaji-kun or Okaji-san.
You are fully Okaji-sama and Learned Okaji-hakase (博士)!
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Oops! That should read “transitive and IN-transitive verb…” 🙂
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Funny, but that’s how I read it. The eye corrects…
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Thank you, Daniel. You are increasing my meager Japanese vocabulary. Am grateful for that, too.
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Japanese is economical and very nuanced. I am eternally grateful for having been born at all to have studied and spoken this amazing language. It is as close to a divine language as one can get, and to learn even a single word of it is to finally know Beauty; to know the eight million spirits that animate the trees, rocks, wheat, wine, and the waves…です ね! To whisper a single ‘sumimasen’ is to whisper a secret!
日本… 永遠に…
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Wonderful Wordplay on W! Great photo too. How cleverly you write intertwining fact and poetry… 🙂
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Thanks, Krys. I found the photo on morguefile.com. The facts, well, they come from everywhere. 🙂
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…in which case a skilfully crafted concise collaboration! 🙂
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Yes!
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“…weighted in weapons, in Woden, in wood…” I sigh as I read… 🙂
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Another part of my mixed heritage…
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