Far
So far, so far your heart
so deep, so deep the dark
so far the star
traveling on the bullet train new age
music of the rails still a harpy's song
rattling out each harmonic dissonance
that parts us, incessant glissando
clack and clamor of canned confusion
ricocheting off unmalleable ore drawling
the angle acuter, the fundamental ever
smaller parallel to a paper point of no return
and none desired. Beneath, just a small
smaller parallel to a paper point of no return
and none desired. Beneath, just a small
click and the engine shoots itself
down an altered course toward
a receding destination halfbent as
the bow that launches the arrow
of an indifferent archer
physical skills to punch it home
never there and now
no different as it veers hopelessly far
from the tracks after what runs faster
than any train can catch, thinner than any
arrow can pin, feet fluid as a deer
jumping the rails and flickering fences,
dry rivers future and past, heading for the green
deep heart of the woods where it feels safe
where its thicketed death is hiding.
so far so far your heart
so deep, so deep the dark
so deep, so deep the dark
so far, so deep, so dark the star
March 2012
Posted for real toads
Laurie's challenge: Perspective
Image: So Far, March, 2012 © joy ann jones
You had me at the first stanza. It's beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThe heartbreak of "the bow that launches the arrow
of an indifferent archer" — and then the lovely subtle changes in the final stanza.
Very nicely done.
K
How I love that magnolia tree in blossom!
ReplyDeleteI like the way you worked the railroad motif into these lines, and captured some of the randomness of individual destiny. And I love the hauntingly beautiful refrain.
Yes. Those first and last stanzas, almost breathless in exquisite sound and feeling. In between the effort and no-effort of the arrow in flight, the train on rails that don't go where you want them. I just finished reading Zen in the Art of Archery so this bowstring really rings in my ears. Years it took him to finally let it go without a thwack, and not aim at the mark, and for it to hit it. What is the mark? Who knows, but you keep writing after it, and it's a beautiful journey with clack and velvet every step of the way.
ReplyDeleteThat's a wonderful book for focusing--being one minded is something not to be confused with my less admirable trait of being single-minded. ;-) Thanks, Ruth--there's no effort to the arrow as it flies, its all the effort before hand that gets you in trouble.
Deletenice...love the wrap around to the chorus....really nice flow throughout and it has a great rhythm and almost lyrical in parts...lots of neat noise too...love the sounds of a train...all the movement is well done, the river, the train, the arrow...i like joy
ReplyDeleteI like how the pace speeds up with the train... the sounds of the train, 'the bow that launches the arrow of an indifferent archer' and 'a paper point of no return'... thanks so much for participating, Joy.
ReplyDeleteWe have a tulip tree just like that. It always seems to bloom at the strangest times.
Just incredible language, Hedge. The repetition in the beginning and ending works beautifully.
ReplyDeleteOh, I really feel the motion in this. I like the repetition of the first stanza to close the poem. It works well here.
ReplyDeleteWhat fantastic writing! Love the repeat of the first stanza at the end and LOVE "the bow that launches the arrow of an indifferent archer". Wow.
ReplyDeletep.s. Is that your magnolia? she is SO beautiful!!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks all--I'm about to go see everyone else's--been out mowing and trimming and having fun in the garden.
ReplyDeleteYes, Sherry, that's my Magnolia soulangiana. The variety name is 'Jane." She's a beauty and very tough. I'll relay your compliment. ;-)
We travel we seek...the heart wants to be struck by an arrow whose archer has raised his/her bow with love
ReplyDeleteyour garden looks like it is all abloom
ReplyDeletelove your tribute to the iron horse that wrote the history of a younger time
The repeating parenthetical style stanzas are effing tremendous, what a great flow. You have a vocabulary from hell and your not afraid to use it. The best thing is with you it never feels forced like when some others try and pack a punch with big words. Flows like Wonka's chocolate river...bravo.
ReplyDeleteThanks for a most excellent comment, H. Now I need to see what you've done with this one.
DeleteFirst, I have to say I've explored the nooks and crannies of your blog and I'm super impressed! You've spent a great deal of time making this functional, useful to your readers and visually appealing! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteSorry, off the topic...
Your poem for this prompt coincidentally,could be described in the same way! I really enjoy your sporadic use of alliteration. As one who enjoys using it also I could learn from the sprinkling of alteration.
I like the feeling that your open/close stanzas gave me. :)
Your words do flow and it is obvious you have a gift of writing a poem that MUST be read outloud to be fully enjoyed. I would LOVE to see lots of photos of your garden here this spring.
ReplyDelete"thicketed death" just awesome!
The cold mechanical precision of this language befits the inscape of distance too great to overcome, ever. Why is that that the close you get to a beloved, the more alien they become? As if longing is the distance-maker, the very thing in me reaching out is the that which makes arrival impossible. For all the transit described in train-travel (a bullet-train, so there's that trajectory, too) and a fired arrow, the "new age" music is yet a "harpy's song," "the fundamental ever/ smaller parallel to a paper point of no return / and none desired." For all that inscape of reaching, last stanza arrived at is the same place where the poem began. Title's perfect. The blooming magnolia, like spring, against a dark sky is another way of nailing it the chill of absence that invades all presence. - Brendan
ReplyDeleteYes, you've caught it, as much as that thing that runs always ahead can ever be caught, the ever moving target that eventually meets a target's fate, but probably not by this inept shooter.
DeleteWooooow. Took the bar and turned it to rails, did you, and then turned it to this poem? The beginning and end are ideal, but struck me very differently as i read them, even though they are the same. When I read the opening stanza, I admired the way it sounded, and how much it said, very simply and briefly. But after reading the middle--I nevah saw that personification coming. It's a difficult thing to pull off without making things sound ridiculous, but you did it well and in spades here--when I read the repeated lines again at the ending, they had a melancholy, heart-tearing weight to them that they hadn't had, or I hadn't seen, the first time.
ReplyDeleteNow the orderlies will wheel me back to the day room and park me in front of Heckle and Jekyll, muttering about "who let this one read Verse Escape again?" My mouth will now hang open for about a week. A Jamaican nurse will shovel tapioca into it and tell me to stop muttering about bars.
gorgeous - I love the repetition in first and final stanzas, and the way you augmented the last... and your poem took me (as always) on a magical ride with its
ReplyDelete"engine [that] shoots itself
down an altered course toward
a receding destination halfbent as
the bow that launches the arrow
of an indifferent archer"
brilliant, really...
oh, and the photo, breathtakingly beautiful
Oh, I loved reading this, hedgewitch. It transported me over the 'flickering fences'.
ReplyDelete