WINTER ON GRAND AVE.
Rope-a-dope with high wind,
the coffee-house snowman bobbles
pinned to the parapet
stub arms akimbo against sleet
but not yet down for count--
(life here of course not refereed)
Only slight strained guy wires,
already defeated tar roof:
one swirl of dislodged rime
should hurl his half-deflated self
to the street, a bus screech--
Carbon-black slags of pipe exhaust
dollar-store bags and beaks
of resin swans from three-flat plots
roll past combination
locks, warehouse doors that conceal flops
At railroad's embankment,
this world's constituent matter
nestles in steep-pitched scree
upon which an impossibly
skewed cherry red swingset
straddles Earth like a boxer, short
just one or two more legs
with which to fight the next damn round
HERR KEPLER'S NOTEBOOK
Time is the bully anchor of the opposing tug-rope team.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
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"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
-------------------------------------
"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
I love the ending. short
ReplyDeletejust one or two more legs
with which to fight the next damn round
The ending makes the poem a full circle.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a long ago favorite song which is still risky for me to try to sing because I break down singing it at the point when the words go, "I am leaving, I am LEAVING!" so I often can't sing/say "but the boxer still remains" and the next lielielie...
Thank you.
I fear that the last lines are a tad neat, but thank you Christopher for the S&G comparison. So much of their catalog closes the throat.
ReplyDelete