View From The Northern Wall: I Shall Take Steps

Thursday, May 2, 2013

I Shall Take Steps

I Shall Take Steps

On the sweeter sea
phosphorescent curling shape
bursts into the air
and flits, then rains down
upon us, the crew
standing on the edge
at the rail, so to now speak
or perhaps one is
on the plank waiting
that command to walk further,
one step further than
all the edges here.

May 2, 2013 10:02 AM

2 comments:

HarlequinMay 2, 2013 at 8:20 PM
Hey, Christopher-- I am glad to be back after a bit of a hiatus for the big C. Gosh... I loved this poem and image. the little bird is such a sublime inspiration and a wonderful protagonist!! nicely done.
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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

Thursday, May 2, 2013

I Shall Take Steps

2 comments:

The View From The Northern Wall

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