1bookstopshere
This project is intended to end up as a small book on handmade paper, illustrated (line drawings) with just a few lines per page. The hope is to explore some thoughts about "lines" and to slow the reader down. Feedback (+ or - ) always welcome, especially with regard to the many awkward elements. thanks, scott
ITERATIONS
We bought lines
And held them,
Hoping,
Balloons or kites
Would take them
And run amok
Upon the sky.
Lines divide
And connect, but
Straight or stretched,
There are two ends
Or none,
But only one end.
Fish go free,
Spawn upstream; pauses
Interrupt our thoughts;
Roots regrow.
Layer on layer of stones
And sand – and sand and
Water and all,
Pressed, building,
Making.
Tides reorganize the sand
And stones only punctuate
Until ground down.
And memory, a trickle
Or a flood, seeps
Out and down like water
In a ditch, only
Lines of matted grass
And dead leaves remain.
And dead leaves fertilize.
Things grow slowly
And death
Makes good fertilizer.
Roots descend in more lines,
Connecting, touching,
Knotting.
We can re-rake the sands
Of our beach, but every tide
Rewrites our history;
Our memories revise
According to our need or,
Like the storms, randomly.
Time erases
And records
Every line crossed.
Rewritten lines are not
Always revised, not
Always new, but always new.
And every tree’s silhouette
In the moon shifts
The water, aspiring,
Toward the sky.
And dark erases,
But like death fertilizes;
Lines are lineage.
At birth
The cord is cut
And yet, the line
Continues.
Memories are webs,
Are lines, etching.
But lines break and
Memory is a one-way street.
Do the stones remember?
Time runs one way,
Like a river, downhill,
Carves and crushes. Memory
Runs backwards.
A stone drops
Through the air,
Slides, bounces, driven
By the same gravity;
A stone twists, twirls
Dropping in the water –
Two paths, not parallel,
But both will reach bottom.
Time may slow but
Will not stop,
Nor memories, though
They may be lost.
There is a certain lightness,
A lack, when someone leaves
The world, spinning faster,
Disorienting, inexpressible
Grief leaving us numb.
Every ring of a tree stump,
Every layer of sediment
In the ocean, turning
Over eons into stone.
Footprints do not survive
In sand; they are changed
To memories.
A single weed aspires to the sky,
A single flower opens
Up. Leaves have their own veins
And roots pushing down and up.
Veins moving blood write in red,
Rewriting across generations
As lightning etches the future
Across the sky.
And always, there are horizons,
Stretching as if to infinity,
Blurring at the edges of our vision.
And again
Lightning in a midnight sky
Might tie the stars
To earth - if only
For a wink.
And thunder
Is always memory.
Making plans in retrospect
Is self-fulfilling.
And snakes . . .
The salted world
Moves faster and
Faster, grows more and
More complex until
It doesn’t. It pares
Itself down
To what’s important.
ITERATIONS
We bought lines
And held them,
Hoping,
Balloons or kites
Would take them
And run amok
Upon the sky.
Lines divide
And connect, but
Straight or stretched,
There are two ends
Or none,
But only one end.
Fish go free,
Spawn upstream; pauses
Interrupt our thoughts;
Roots regrow.
Layer on layer of stones
And sand – and sand and
Water and all,
Pressed, building,
Making.
Tides reorganize the sand
And stones only punctuate
Until ground down.
And memory, a trickle
Or a flood, seeps
Out and down like water
In a ditch, only
Lines of matted grass
And dead leaves remain.
And dead leaves fertilize.
Things grow slowly
And death
Makes good fertilizer.
Roots descend in more lines,
Connecting, touching,
Knotting.
We can re-rake the sands
Of our beach, but every tide
Rewrites our history;
Our memories revise
According to our need or,
Like the storms, randomly.
Time erases
And records
Every line crossed.
Rewritten lines are not
Always revised, not
Always new, but always new.
And every tree’s silhouette
In the moon shifts
The water, aspiring,
Toward the sky.
And dark erases,
But like death fertilizes;
Lines are lineage.
At birth
The cord is cut
And yet, the line
Continues.
Memories are webs,
Are lines, etching.
But lines break and
Memory is a one-way street.
Do the stones remember?
Time runs one way,
Like a river, downhill,
Carves and crushes. Memory
Runs backwards.
A stone drops
Through the air,
Slides, bounces, driven
By the same gravity;
A stone twists, twirls
Dropping in the water –
Two paths, not parallel,
But both will reach bottom.
Time may slow but
Will not stop,
Nor memories, though
They may be lost.
There is a certain lightness,
A lack, when someone leaves
The world, spinning faster,
Disorienting, inexpressible
Grief leaving us numb.
Every ring of a tree stump,
Every layer of sediment
In the ocean, turning
Over eons into stone.
Footprints do not survive
In sand; they are changed
To memories.
A single weed aspires to the sky,
A single flower opens
Up. Leaves have their own veins
And roots pushing down and up.
Veins moving blood write in red,
Rewriting across generations
As lightning etches the future
Across the sky.
And always, there are horizons,
Stretching as if to infinity,
Blurring at the edges of our vision.
And again
Lightning in a midnight sky
Might tie the stars
To earth - if only
For a wink.
And thunder
Is always memory.
Making plans in retrospect
Is self-fulfilling.
And snakes . . .
The salted world
Moves faster and
Faster, grows more and
More complex until
It doesn’t. It pares
Itself down
To what’s important.
2DebiCates
>1 bookstopshere: Scott, so glad you did this. It's going to take me a little time to read them all. I want to take them slow, as you intended. I think the idea of a book on handmade paper would be lovely. Is that still in the cards?
I do love this first stanza! It does that thing that poetry does that other literature does not, one could almost say that special thing poetry alone can do: invite the reader to interpret their own personalized meaning, a meaning that could be applied over the years to varying circumstances. "Run amok upon the sky" could become a phrase used in common conversation when discussing something we hope to happen, the lovely thing we want a big dream to do.
We bought lines
And held them,
Hoping,
Balloons or kites
Would take them
And run amok
Upon the sky.
I do love this first stanza! It does that thing that poetry does that other literature does not, one could almost say that special thing poetry alone can do: invite the reader to interpret their own personalized meaning, a meaning that could be applied over the years to varying circumstances. "Run amok upon the sky" could become a phrase used in common conversation when discussing something we hope to happen, the lovely thing we want a big dream to do.
3DebiCates
>1 bookstopshere: Is it okay if I add this to The Poetry Collective's directory of Original threads?
ETA: Nevermind. I did it already. ha Thinking on it a few minutes, I realized it was obvious.
ETA: Nevermind. I did it already. ha Thinking on it a few minutes, I realized it was obvious.
4bookstopshere
>3 DebiCates: the paper looks good- it’ll be clunky looking, but a nice tactile experience I hope. My sister will contribute the drawings. She is mostly a ceramic sculptor, but it’s a project we’ve wanted to do for a while.
