View From The Northern Wall: The First Small Stone

Sunday, January 1, 2012

The First Small Stone

Elsewhere The War Continues

Halfway to Mount Hood
in the forest a small stone
gleams in the river
after my spinning
sidearm cast, four skips before
coming to its rest.

January 1, 2012 1:56 PM

1 comment:

LucyJanuary 2, 2012 at 6:24 AM
Oh I love that! So glad you're doing this, it'll suit you so well, I think.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

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

The View From The Northern Wall

Some years ago my poetry took on a mythic flavor and I became a character in my own poems, a mage, "the man of the Northern Wall". This apellation is not completely fictional. My middle name is Noordwal, a Dutch term for north wall, though in current Dutch it mainly means north bank as in riverbank. I was told that an ancestor, a Portugese Jew escaping the Inquisition, settled in a small Dutch town and took this name from where he settled, near the north wall of the town. I have thought for a long time that -wal meant wall, think my mother told me that. A linguist might say that my usage is no longer common, is an older usage, but then the Inquisition happened in Portugal a few centuries ago, right around the time the Moors lost control of the Iberian Peninsula and the Jews lost the modest protection given them by Islam. Now I write as this mage, my poetry persona.

View From The Northern Wall

Sunday, January 1, 2012

The First Small Stone

1 comment:

The View From The Northern Wall

About Me

Over The Wall

All Time Favorites

Blog Archive

Page Hit Counter