Being Neither End nor Beginning, I Look to the Earth
Or the sky’s red haze, scattered in past particles,
enhanced. The goings, the matters. The truest lies.
May we roll in reverse towards the future?
This ladder curves into the horizon, blending faith
with history, with solid and liquid. With gas.
I have bled on her rails and taken myself
hostage. I have returned rain to air. I am rendered
like never-turning wheels, fixed in space,
guided by friction and soured prayer; oxidation
consumes me. Sleepless among evergreens,
we pledge vigilance and note the absence of candor.
Somewhere water flows, but not here, today.
“Trem Abandonado” by Rafael Vianna Croffi
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/rvc/29472173566)
The last of three poems launched from this painting.
O at the Edges 
This is so good. ππ
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Thanks very much!
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Brilliant
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Thanks very much, Dave.
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Interesting read with flooded Houston woes dominating my thoughts – “guided by friction and soured prayer” indeed. Love this one’s title! (Same holds for Houston.)
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No telling what I would have written had Hurricane Harvey occurred while I was writing these. Almost everything I’ve written in the past ten days has been flavored by the storm.
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Reblogged this on Crazy Pasta Child.
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Thanks for reblogging.
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It is fun watching you riff on a theme. Jozu des…
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This was a fun exercise. The publisher offered roughly a three-week period to work through – from poets asking for and receiving the artwork, to their submission deadline. I wrote these three in one week, and sent them off without any expectations. But they took one, printed out the broadside, and then promptly closed shop. Small press poetry is a rough biz!
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We live in a rather unpoetic society. Selling aside, you are keeping beauty alive, and your spiritual reward is assured, if not your financial uplift.
May Amaterasu O-mikami drizzle golden thoughts down upon you continuously!
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Sales would be nice, but as you said, we live in an unpoetic society. I’m pleased that anyone reads my writing.
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I’ll take being drizzled by Amaterasu any day. Money, fame, prestige… all of it poison…
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May the drizzle never end!
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I think this is my favorite of the three in the series.
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Thanks, Charles. I don’t have a favorite, but the sonnet was fun to write.
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good post
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Thank you.
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This has the characteristics of a riddle, which bears careful examination. Reminded of this, from the late John Ashbery: “For me, poetry is very much the time that it takes to unroll, the way music does…it’s not a static, contemplatable thing like a painting or a piece of sculpture.β
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Ashbery was a master at establishing tone, or mood, and allowing readers to insert themselves into the poems to find their own meanings.
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The image of the rail as ladder is sticking with me. Definitely seems like all my ladders now are horizontal, but at least they go somewhere, and I’m not yet too rusted out to follow…
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Side-to-side, up and down, it often seems the same to me. Except when I fall… π
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