I stumble along.
It's a muddy day.
In the mud are shards of grief,
sharp and gray at once,
set points up for me
to find with my bare skinned feet
so's I remember
what the hell happened
when I looked the other way.
I won't argue about that but it happened as dated on the poem, back on June 22, 2011. Were you online and active in your blog at that time? To my knowledge I have never for any reason posted anywhere else from my archive once the poem has been written until I post on my blog. For that matter, I don't post again from my blog when a poem has been published. I only post a poem when it is written or from the order in turn from the archive. So the date beneath is meaningful for more than just when I finished the poem the first time. This would be less true in book publishing.
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.
Mechanical designer for industry, now retired, once a Bay Area Hippie, went undercover in 1972, I've been writing poetry for years.
Contact: 3topper45@gmail.com
I liked this one the first time I read it, even more now...
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I have published I am pretty sure. Maybe I wrote something like it.
ReplyDeleteYou put this in the comment section of one of my early poems...
ReplyDeleteOr something similar... About feet and shards
ReplyDeleteI won't argue about that but it happened as dated on the poem, back on June 22, 2011. Were you online and active in your blog at that time? To my knowledge I have never for any reason posted anywhere else from my archive once the poem has been written until I post on my blog. For that matter, I don't post again from my blog when a poem has been published. I only post a poem when it is written or from the order in turn from the archive. So the date beneath is meaningful for more than just when I finished the poem the first time. This would be less true in book publishing.
ReplyDelete