Tendencies

Okay, I haven't posted for a couple of days.  I've been thinking about it a lot, but just haven't done it.  Part of that reason is that I'm spending some time reading poetry.  I have several books by Mark Strand.  He was a Poet Laureate of the U.S. for a year, and has won a Pulitzer.  I'm going through the books and actually writing down some of the lines that really strike me.  He has at least one per poem.  To me, he "gets" it.  He's not pastoral at all, no sweeping vistas, etc.  He's more internally focused, which I guess is what I am.  I've read back over what I've posted so far, and noticed that much of it is pretty dark stuff.  I don't want to write dark stuff, but that's what tends to come out.  It's not that I don't want to deal with it, because we all have to deal with the shadows along with the rest, but I'm not sure that's what other people want to read.  I know it helps sometimes to realize that I'm not the only one with somewhat morbid thoughts, but I don't want to drag someone down further than they already are.  I've been thinking about that for the past several days.  I'm going to try to be a bit more upbeat, but no promises.  Today's poem isn't all that upbeat, but here it is.  Reading it again, it speaks more to the process, I think.  Where the ideas come from, and how to dig them out.  It's not that ideas aren't easy, because they just happen.  The problem comes in when you try to express them in a coherent way.  You want to capture the central idea while presenting it in a manner that's understandable to a reader.  I know what I want to say, but I'm rarely sure that the way I say it makes sense to anyone else.  I guess I'll just have to see if anyone gets it.

Scrounging words

Scrounging words out of a mind
that has been strip-mined
down to the bedrock
with nothing left

call in the hammers
and the hard rock miners
there has to be more there
it can't all be gone

What's beneath the rock
that lies in layer upon layer
the dead from so long ago
that even it's name has forgotten

what's under the rock
under the bottom layer
so far down it doesn't remember
that there's a sky up there

go down far enough
and maybe you reach the fire
the fire in the middle
is there enough reach?


Copyright 2010 C. Thames