April 26 - The Anxiety of Influence

The delicate balance between learning from the past and seeing for the future, between influence and vision, is an ever-tense reality for poets. The anxiety of influence weighs us down from behind, like a dying dog dragging its hind legs, softly whining for our attention. Let go.
Tomorrow I will post about the anxiety of vision.

The Anxiety of Influence

Do you remember the anxiety of influence?
In college the weight of some other intelligence bore down
upon what little liberty we had left.
Invisible weights weigh more; they pull little, leave no scars, and make us wonder why I write in three’s:
What difference does it make to you or me why I like the feel of three
or choose to rhyme my words and phrases such that others say
he is old before his time. Why? It’s my time.

Meanwhile,

Outside my window,
snow falls all the same.
In time with nature’s meter.

And yes, I know,
I Could have ended with a rhyme;
Perhaps another time.

I am done with it.

April 23 Capricho 1

Naming and describing poetry, or a blog about poetry, is awkward. It's almost never correct - dead on. It always floats just aside of what was intended. Yesterday I began my search for peers on the blogosphere. I feel like a phony before I started. How can I skim other people's poetry?
Today I found great poetry; the kind that resonates knowing. Poetry is the attempt to know it, dead on; the words are often mere medium.
Finding a kindred poet - say, if I dare, a friend - this way is daunting.
But still, I hope you read my poems.


Capricho 1

She loves the money plants,
those tiny, translucent discs,
circles of fine shimmer and stalk
light and skin, light and fibers that are rarely
what they seem.

The money plants multiply
voraciously, in clay vessel or rich earth
or on the old and white vinyl siding
of my good neighbor’s house -
patiently.

As the good morning dove coos,
my daughter traces God’s hand in the grass...
meanwhile, sun and wind create - en vinyls
as in the seven millennia
where shimmer and shadow are true.

April 22: Ice

Today, the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets is meeting in Egg Harbor, not far from my house; I spent the day in my garden... Next time I'll be there, for today, a poem for departing winter.

Ice

Walking the lake,
I try to keep pace with the soft milky ice,
while cardinals and finches little discriminate.
The soft, blotchy ice is patient.
I am more like the birds.

A mile or so round
and the pace becomes more about steps – boot hitting earth, hitting earth-
then minutes,
then moments waddle out of the pond, onto the ice and
Honk.
I am more like the minutes.

Bounding across indifferent white ice,
the giggles warn us all. Up!
Up! Is all delight, but down
is fright-filled ecstasy.

You see, we cannot believe
our ears – like brightly lightened Easter eggs left to whether…
It is great peril -
pure ecstasy:
Three little girls on indifferent, white ice.

Then, the moment’s down.

I walk the lake,
Pacing myself in minutes, discriminations
as I pass a lone man walking
in the opposite direction… Up!
Up! comes the fright filled minutes.

Violence is great peril
- pure ecstasy - like
brightly lightened minutes on softening, white ice.