i rearranged all the furniture in my room and now my desk is against the window so i can look out and see everything.
it’s dark right now, but the cicadas are trying to sing amid the roar of the wind and the rumble of thunder. oh, and the funny noises the power substation two blocks away makes during a storm.
it sounds like a hurricane out there. exciting!
anyway.
once upon a time i tried my hand at writing a story made up of poems. i decided to call it “adam and eveline” because i thought that a wonderfully witty pun. well. i think it could have been if i had a better and more complete idea of where the story was going to end up. telling a hazily defined story through even hazier poetry, however, makes it quite possible for your readers to have no idea whatsoever about what you’re talking.
sigh.
it’s too bad, too, because i really love a few of those poems. perhaps i should study john dos passos’ U.S.A. again for help — he has a fascinating way of weaving one overall story through a variety of little stories, descriptions, stream-of-consciousness writings and impressions.
in the meantime, it’s raining, so here’s the poem that set me off on this particular tangential ramble. rave on, storm.
outside the house it was dark
the sort of dim murkiness you’d find
in the middle of a mug of coffee
if you chanced therein to wander
the rain thudded down steadily
but she didn’t seem to mind
and if she didn’t, he didn’t either
they were tweeded up, wellies on
woolly muffler-wrapped and warm
distant thunder rumbles took bass
against the alto rain shimmer-song
and throaty whispering wind
they carelessly clasped each other’s hands
swinging arms down the lane like children
if wishes came true what would you want?
he queried curiously, imagining her rainbow
of off-the-wall, genuine answers
she stayed silent, sunk in thought-mires
i would wish her voice came hesitantly
that i would catch a cold tonight
and would be laid up for weeks
in front of a blazing piney fire
furthermore i would wish you’d visit
bring weighty tomes and read aloud
or discuss the deeps of theology
argue lewis and chesterton and the mystics
then i might wish we would fall quiet
a contemplative silence gazing at the fire
wandering in separate imaginations
what would you wish for?
he smiled in the darkness at her ramble
i would wish … he said mysteriously
that i could ask you another question
