Rock fences litter Delaware county,
Driving one sees smoke curl from chimneys into
Necklaces of geese gone south.
The town is empty at 6 a.m.
A lone bundle of clothes
Waits at the red light to cross,
Steam pouring from her mouth.
- Kirby Olson (the Lutheran Surrealist)
this poem represents a first a first the first time a poem has been sent to me by email
a really fine poem
i think it is information
for a painting and nothing more
the aspect of the poem which carries
the sense off song
is in the ending of both stanzas
in order to print it here
i wrote it out on a sheet of paper
and now i have the sense
that the poem will remain with me forever
it is a poem
that speaks for itself
not even the poet himself
is evident in the picture
except for the fact
of someone having
seen something
should you be the soul
who comes across this poem
take the time to read it out loud
the overall sense
at least for this reader
is the haiku
that sense of stoic observation
this poem was published in the
South Dakota Review
or something like that
and i present it here
as a gratis offering
to the indifferent world
save for a pleasant voice or two
jh
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the occasional rantings and bantering of a poet-cum-philosopher-cum-musician-cum-theologian-cum-traveller in time and space...in short... an epistemological nomad...with a guitar
3 comments:
beautiful poem
thanks for posting it
and thanks to kirby
rock fences
make me think of scotland
but even here
in southern california
we have a few old retaining walls
and irrigation ditches
made of rounded boulders of granite
left in the corners of
early 20th century orange groves
that have not yet succumbed
to the suburban blight of tract homes
and i meant to add
that there is something
fundamental about rock
you can't move it very far easily
at least you didn't used to be able to
rock structures necessarily reflect
something local
you can't change your local geology
you make do with what you have
in california we have granite fences
in texas they have limestone fences
in the northeast they have slate fences
each has it own charm
that has not yet succumbed
to the homogenization of american culture
These fences come about because just under the soil here is a layer of slate, blue slate. It has to be picked out by hand in order to create any depth in the soil by which you can plow. So they took it out, and then, needing fences as well, used it for that.
I put in a few apple trees in my yard last year and the work of it was immense. Getting the slate chunks out took about two hours per hole. So as I'm driving and looking at the rock fences, I marvel at the man-hours -- and the centuries.
Thanks for this, JH, and thanks to Sally for reading my poem.
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