verged

she
felt or
dinary–
who was she?—ask
ing questions that never quite knew what they

within my blood swims the first primal sea–
oceans of pre
vious lives
merging
and

e
merging
over and
over, over
over and over again—how can I

sought—trying to exist inside patterns
that contained some
kind of mean
ing, yearn
ing

be
come my
aquatic
body—floating,
following moontides and circles of light

I try to meet the waters and sky, to
let them over
whelm, swallow
me whole
and

to
be re
vealed, seen by
eyes that were not
her own, acknowledged by another mind

unknowing, to tangle me inside the
invisible
nets woven
by the
first

stars,
embraced
by threads that
expand without
limits into what was already there

I’ve been working around this poem all week for the earthweal prompt to “embrace the extra-human wherever it is found, in beast, fish, tree, land- or seascape or star canopy.” Laura at dVerse provided the form, tetractys, that provided some kind of order.

35 thoughts on “verged”

  1. I find your collage wonderfully soothing to look at, Kerfe, and the idea that we miss the infinite all around us, hence

    ‘expand without
    limits into what was already there’

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  3. I literally cannot express how much I love this concept of yours Kerfe – and how well executed it is! I shall have to try it. Also – I like how you broke some of the words across lines – this is all-around fantastic writing!

    -David

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  4. The words of this poem within a poem are so good, especially the ‘I’ section that gives me shivers. I do find the presentation distracting though and would have preferred lines not constrained by syllables, but by thoughts. It’s probably just me, but I found myself reading in a hesitant way, peering over the end of each line, unsure about where the phrase was going. Maybe that’s the point. I’m just very conservative, like an easy life, I suppose.

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    1. You are right–I knew it would be confusing. I had a very hard time finding a form for my idea. Somehow making it disjointed felt right. But it is hard to read.

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      1. Getting a double flow going in a poem is hard. Like cleave poems, they often don’t gel. These two poems are so right together, side by side or inter-locked, it’s the line breaks I find distracting, especially when it divides a word. I know that can be making a point in itself, we just have to work harder to get it. I’m lazy. Most people manage it with no problem 🙂

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          1. Some would say you shouldn’t have to decipher a poem. I enjoy poems that need to be read carefully, as yours often do, because the ideas are original and the language is allusive. What I really hate are the poems that just don’t make any sense at all, because the grammar is all wrong or the long words don’t mean what the poet thinks they mean or they use words nobody normal has ever heard of when there’s a perfectly good common word. It’s not ‘communication’ if you have to open the dictionary every other word, nor if it doesn’t follow the rules of the language.

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            1. I agree. I’m always glad when I take the time to really read a good poem, even if it seems daunting at first. But nonsense which pretends to be something profound I have no patience for.

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  5. Artist and subject have their greeting selves here, one peering down, the other swimming round. The lines held or attracted toward a central (centering) pillar of attention, loosening then gathering. The second collage worked best for me that way.

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  7. I love the cosmic and dreamy feeling of this–inner mind and space beyond connected–stardusts and oceans. I like the way the poem looks on the page, but for me, sometimes the breaking up of words is a distraction. The collages are so fascinating!

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    1. Thanks Merril. I think this is a difficult poem in many ways. I like the disjointed rhythm of breaking up the words for this narrative, but I also realize it makes it hard to read. These are all old collages, quite old. I’ve been looking through old photos–I think the actual work is somewhere in storage.

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  8. Well……that swirled and swirled, like dna itself…highly original and symmetrical, out in the cosmos. Quite stunned by how you did that, and the complex structures and meanings to discover..

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  9. This is a demanding form in its way, but also one that can surge and waver as you make it do here, to great effect. The nuances swirl around the rocks of thought like existence swirls through time, producing lines I love, like “invisible/nets woven/by the/first/stars…”

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  10. This is so creative! the geometric art combined with triangular concreteness of the Tetracyts contrast immensely with the emotive words, seeking to break all the boundaries
    “that
    expand without
    limits into what was already there”

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  11. I enjoyed the flow of words even in broken wording there is a deep connection to something more. It has a dreamy quality with various fragments working together as a whole. Your artwork compliments the poetry. Beautifully woven.

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