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Tuesday, December 21, 2004 |
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I Offer a Google Collage to Mark the Start of Winter
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poem by John Haines
If the Owl Calls Again
while the long moon drifts |
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I had a hard night, too. Came out of a bad dream at a quarter to three and it was a long time back to where sleep is. So cold, even with the extra blanket I put on last night. All the animals were there. This is such a rambling house, so many little rooms, why do they all choose me to sleep on/with at night? But we were all the warmer for it, and that was the point. Four cats and Apple, and after the middle-of-the-night wakeup, even Sally climbed up with us for a while. I woke up late to a very bright day, but now, at 9:45, it's still only 25 degrees F. No water comes out of the faucets this morning. It's been a while since I ran the well dry. I hope that's all it is (I did several loads of wash yesterday), and not a frozen pipe. I'll wait until the temperature climbs a little to try and prime the pump. I got presents mailed off to family yesterday, and I've distributed cow cookies around the immediate area. A second batch of cookies will go out in the mail fresh next Monday for the new year and in honor of my birthday, to you guys. I have the mailers ready to go. Please email me snail-mail addresses so we can share this weird communion. Tomorrow we go to Lucero's house in Likely to do some computer maintenance and I have some little things for her, as well. My friends came and picked up their animals yesterday so it's just us, now. They brought chocolates, and a bottle of Goats Do Roam red wine! I'd told them about that South African label--I'd tasted it at one of Michael Sykes's literary gatherings in Cedarville--and they actually found some for me! I am a Capricorn, and it will be entirely appropriate to open this on MONDAY when I celebrate my birthday. I've been doing a good deal of reading lately, the old Ann Arbor "Poets on Poetry" series--Charles Simic, Galway Kinnell, et al.; poetry-related books run about a buck, buck-and-a-quarter, used on Amazon these days. I'm also half-through a very special book called Dwellings by Linda Hogan that I find thrilling. I'd forgotten about her until Dr. O reminded me. I've decided a couple of things. As much as I ever really decide anything. First, I won't read in the morning anymore. I tend more and more to indulge myself in this very pleasurable activity until there's no time left for writing. Second, I'm going to work mostly with a different form of writing. These might be called feuilletons, or they might not, these very brief "poetic" prose pieces. But I haven't the years left to put in a full apprenticeship to poetry, and all that comes of that anyway is the ego-gratification of having once in a while crafted something respectable. But I also lack the experience of telling a story well: anything I write tends to be afflicted with music--my ear is a slave to the sounds of words; this gives my prose an overwrought aspect that grows tiresome after a while. But the math involved in counting out rhythms, developing a knack for scansion--I am so not there. Nor am I exactly willing to just let loose and break the lines where it feels right to me. And then there's such self-satisfaction built into the cleverly enjambed line, and it lends itself so readily to suggestiveness, already a weak point with me, and to passive-aggressive expression.
Because what I have to do is tell stories. A thousand stories. And getting them told is the point of my impulse, not Becoming a Poet. I hope they'll be brief but intense, and satisfying to read. And I won't know what to call them. But that's what I'm going to work at, I think. For now. |
