Thursday, January 29, 2009

Plodding Along, Decisions

This first poem was written in the morning. The other in the afternoon. The first, I think is colored by the fact that I have the whole work day ahead of me, staring at AutoCAD, going out into the bakery to measure stuff I don't really care about, interpreting vaguenesses into precise measurements and solutions, trying to make a clear communication of the results I get so someone else can actually fabricate and install some new little or possibly large mechanical process that might or might not do what the original intent was. That is the process that I am paid to create, and it is art in its own tedious way. I have basically all of the files I have created since I started working at this bakery in 1997. These drawings are all built on a skill set I began to gather in 1973 as a board and pencil drafter, and transformed into the skill set of a 2d AutoCAD designer in the early nineties. Ho hum.

Plodding Along

I reach deep inside,
Bring forth the fire, paint the sky,
Give the sky to you.
You expose your wings.
You fly above the bright flames,
Shine with your own light.

It's always like this.
I am left behind like this.
Plodding along, me.

*****************************

I was visiting Lucy at Box Elder and this poetic form came up, called the Fib. That is short for Fibonacci and he was a mathematician associated with a particular number sequence. Start with 1. Add the number to the left. But there is no number to the left, so still 1. Add the new 1 with the number to the left, also 1. That equals 2. Add the number to the left, get 3, and so on. So then you get 1,1,2,3,5,8. Stop there. Thats the count of the syllables in each line. Because I rarely color inside the lines, though I might between them, I took a true event from back in 1966 and set it to a Fib and its mirror image. This poem took place very near the end of my workday and it filled a playful purpose as my end of day break.

This little neighbor dog was called Chim (chim cherie) and liked to go on walks with me. She liked to follow ahead, knowing you were going the way she was and would tell her where to turn or whatnot. So I started to follow her. This is what happened. Overtly.

Decisions

My
Dog
Follows
By leading
But then a crossroads
Causes her to wait while I choose.

I tried to fool her, make her lead.
When she understood,
She refused,
Would not
Lead
Us.
***

What she did, she looked down at the gutter, back at me, then turned around and went behind me, touching the back of my leg with her nose, wagging her tail fiercely.

7 comments:

  1. Both poems are lovely. Like the sky on fire...beautiful.

    I like the "Fib" form. I will have to try that sometime.

    Funny how dogs are. It seems to me that my old dog always knew where I was going -- but I never tested her.:)

    How is your pregnant Faerie friend? ;)

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  2. ever since i read you were a mechanical designer for industry i was hoping you'd post a picture of a diagram or something......

    i have noted that even though you are quite poetic you frequently refer to numerical sequencing......

    mechanics have a poetry all their own...... in many ways do not humans conceive of God as the great mechanic of the Universe?

    image and likeness indeed..... steampunk

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  3. Faith, I like it too. Remember that I mirrored it. The first half is the Fib. The second is me fibbing.

    Ghost, I have two problems with your implied request. One is that everything I do is proprietary and I do not own it. I am technically in trouble publishing it. That is a miniscule trouble. I can publish to PDF files but do not know how to make pictures of them on the computer. I am not enough of a photographer to do the set up required to make pictures of my printouts. I suppose I could email pdf files to you if you want of windowed views off the dwg I chose. I can't pdf the whole thing from home because I only have the reader, so I have to scan a printed view and scan to the pdf file. This is difficult. I don't have access in any other way.

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  4. Faith, regarding my pregnant friend, today she was pretty grumpy and was muttering about castrating blankety blank, spending some time behind that tree making strange noises. I noticed she has gathered some material and is weaving something, tells me its none of my business what. In other words, she is fine. Her wings are as beautiful as ever. Her belly is a tad bigger and the rest of her glows, except her mood.

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  5. well, i'm sure they are beautiful..... i figured you would be unable to post work stuff....

    later

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  6. Thanks for making me laugh this morning! Maybe you could use your drafting skills to design a lovely nursery for your Faerie friend and her mood will start to glow like the rest of her :)

    My daughter used to make lovely faerie houses in our yard...with lovely little courtyards for faerie dancing...but I don't think she ever made a faerie nursery in the house.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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