Saturday, September 25, 2010

Word & Question

This month's Word & Question (the rules of the poetry game found at that link) is hosted by Dauvit Balfour at his blog Crosses and Cradles. You can read other entries by people there.

The Word I received: Meander

The Question I received: Do dials yawn?

Hmmm...

Too fast to see the speed with which shadows
wheel across the dials, in parks where men play chess,
we did the yawning first, fled set rhythms,
afraid to so meander - or not knowing how -
we stamped the pace of nature with our yawn's
contagion: the worded tree rings, the autumn dander,
like these were the home of the slowness
we tried to get rid of; no longer struck
with their rushing vision of persistence.
Such is it to get too fast. The thick meadow webs
the spiders build among the tower grasses
seem old; as the hay-bodies, seed-headed, lean heavy,
revealing clouds of arachnid-works between,
we no more think of instantaneous cities.

8 comments:

Belfry Bat said...

such a vivid portrayal of a dreary perception... who would have thought it?

chapeau, monsieur.

Paul Stilwell said...

Thank you, kind sir!

Salome Ellen said...

"Free" poetry is pretty much impossible for me. I'm glad it's not for you. This is very evocative.

Paul Stilwell said...

Thanks, and I'm glad you found it evocative! Honestly, I find it hard to write free verse myself; this poem may seem like free verse I think because of the near-constant enjambments.

Thomas D said...

Wow! Verbally alert, precise, lively, lovely ...

Paul Stilwell said...

Thank you very much, Dylan!

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

I'm hopeless with free verse myself.

My favourite part of yours is "in parks where men play chess."

And I love the idea of tree rings as a yawn of nature--or the stamp of a yawn on nature. Brilliant, Stilwell! =D

Paul Stilwell said...

You know, that was my fave part too when composing this. It's nice to get a strongly iambic meter (at least I think it's iambic) that gives some solid grounding before carrying on a thought, which would otherwise be hard to follow.

Thanks, and I'm happy you liked it. :)