By Geoffrey G. O'Brien
To remember people in the act
Of speaking is to love them
And not the turquoise substrate
Redon supposed was all there was
To vases, any container, the vessel
Objects are. To remember
People in the act of speaking
Is to love them, but not for anything
They say. An open mouth
Unembarrassed in the lower parts
Of the face, vase that when
It's drawn becomes a lamp
Now that it's getting darker
Earlier, done before we are
Finished forgetting not to be,
Thinking about the lip of the vase
Or a smudge of stray indigo
Above it, and the butterfly about
To test the limits of what's happened
Once and less than once.
--------
"'Series' is from a suite of four poems...that investigate brevity and virtuality in four media (music, painting, poetry, and politics)," writes O'Brien at Poets.org. "The poem takes this privileging of form over content to an extreme by valuing the person and her capacity to say over anything she might actually utter."
It was over 65 degrees today, so although I had to do some computer work and laundry-folding in the morning and early afternoon, I spent as much of the late afternoon as possible enjoying this:
Snowdrops in my neighbor's yard.
There are still lots of spots like this all around the neighborhood...
...but there has also been enough melting that we can see deer and dog tracks in the mud.
We are also seeing more bunnies...
...and lots of happy little birdies...
...and in a couple of places, sunshine colored flowers!
My evening involved Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (sexist/heterosexist crap) and Beauty and the Beast (merely blah) and Adam's friend distracting me with X-Men speculation. More tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment