Tuesday, October 25, 2011

What Impends

The woods are more open by the day.
Three croaks from overhead: a raven,
rattling like gravel in an ice cream churn.

We've moved to the high country
where the power lines cut the sky
into polygons of cloud

too bright for human eyes: where
the stars burn like acetylene,
and loneliness fits over your heart

like the sleeve of a sphygmomanometer.
What impends – what waits – what hangs –
is a noiseless leaning tower of air.


In response to this Morning Porch post.

10 comments:

The Poet's Lizard said...

Dark raven ice cream. XD

* * *

Love the poetry as usual, Dale. Though it's hard to admit to that growing sense of constriction...

Dave said...

1. Great poem. Pleased to have played a small role in its inception.

2. You used the word "sphygmomanometer" in a poem! That rocks.

Dale said...

1) Not so small! The first two lines are almost verbatim.

2) Not to mention "acetylene." Am I cool or what?

Kathleen said...

You ARE cool! Oh, I love the sounds in this. And the sights. And, of course, the sphygmomanometer.

Lucy said...

'sphygmomanometer' is stunning - though I'm afraid I had to look it up but once I had the image totally grabbed like ... a sphygmomanometer!

And I just love the high, airy, rarefied feel of it, and the power line polygons, and the perfect tense in 'we've moved...', and all of it really. Just wonderful.

Jayne said...

I admit, I too, had to look up sphygmom... and then it all made sense.
I had my BP taken this morning, and it is obviously time for another massage. ;)
Lovely poem, Dale. I've been off the grid quite a bit lately--technical issues and hardware changes--and your blog is one of the handful I always miss while away. Your poetry, no matter dark or light, always affects the beat of my heart. (In a good way!) :)

marly youmans said...

Gravel in the churn and the tower of air: especially nice!

Can you manage to read it out loud without stopping to get air before sphygmomanometer?

Dale said...

I'm hoping nobody requests this at a reading, Marly :-) I can do it in a conversational voice, but if I was trying to project...? I think it would be a two-breath line.

marly said...

XD

You ought to record it at home and post! (Have you recorded any of your poems? I have some up, but just for the Paul Digby videos. I made my first recording with a Pokemon microphone out of the toy box! Later Paul gave me a pretty good one. Out of pity, I suppose--I had bought one locally, and he said it wasn't firing on all channels. That's not a proper description, of course.)

Dale said...

So far as I know, my voice is recorded nowhere. I'm painfully self-conscious about it -- for instance, I hate hearing my voice on recorded telephone messages.

Paradoxically, I've always read aloud to my family, with great pleasure, & it's still a nightly ritual with my wife. It's an interesting disconnect. Not sure what to make of it.