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V2
Sunken Poem (The Tank)
Everything we do is music. —John Cage
Water Walk
Silent Evolution
I spend many hours these days in The Tank, plunging in to sate my need to be refreshed in word waters. It is always something of a fishing expedition, but often enough I come away enlightened; and fishing is a noble profession—especially in The Tank, where words swim in schools that stream meaning beyond words.Sometimes I catch one and nourish myself with it, even, at times, use it to become a fish! I sometimes spend hours inside The Tank when I should be elsewhere. There are things to do in the garden, errands to run, visits to make, grandchildren to be with, causes to serve that I care about; there’s cooking to be done, drowsing to be done, rabbit holes to hop down. But I find, for the time being at least, I often need to go into The Tank to breathe. I need it. Need it.
Sometimes I like to venture down to the bottom rung of the ladder to give one last read to a sunken poem that has edged to the drain. I like to do that.
Sink or soar? I think to myself, like I’m the sole arbiter of its destiny. I take one last look at a poem I’ve long moved on from, just to see if, in the light of the circumstances, it might deserve to bubble back up to the top; here in the Tank one has the power to do so. I spend many hours these days in the Tank.
I toss this overboard. It slowly dips. (In my imagination there is an atoll that embraces immersed words forming necklaces of poems, strings of green seeking light. There is a reef off Isla Mujeres where an underwater world of statuary passes time in silent evolution. They speak in silence. Nothing floats. They sink into sediment on their way back to the stars, always headed home.)
I hope my small offerings to The Tank find oxygen and float for a time before sinking, as all do, back into the sediment of stars.
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V1
I spend many hours these days in the
Eratosphere, plunging in to sate my need to be refreshed in poetic waters. It is always something of a fishing expedition, but often enough I come away enlightened; and fishing is a noble profession—especially in the metaphorical sense. I while away for hours when I have obligations elsewhere — in the garden, on the road running errands, making visits, caring for grandchildren, being of service to causes I care about, cooking, sleeping, hopping down rabbit holes. But I find, for the time being at least, I often need to go into the
Eratosphere to breathe.
Sometimes I like to venture down to the bottom rung of the ladder on a board to give one last read to a poem that has sunk to the precipice. I like to do that.
Sink or soar? I think to myself, like I’m the sole arbiter of its destiny. I take one last look at a poem I’ve long moved on from, just to see if, in the light of the dire circumstances, it might deserve to be bumped back up to the top; that I might see something not spotted before that I feel compelled to comment on, even at this late, final hour — at least here in the Eratosphere one has the power to do so.
Does the poem, now dangling by a string, I think to myself,
deserve one more ride to the top, and down again in the swift waters to inevitable oblivion? Like this, which I am writing now, might be worthy of when its time comes down to nearly nothing, and it is dangling, ready to go? I spend many days these days in the
Eratosphere.
I will not likely bother to clean this up before posting it somewhere there.
Perhaps it is a prose poem that would thrive on the Non-Metrical Board.
Maybe it is more suited to the obscure Board of Fiction where prose languishes in an echo chamber .
Perhaps, now that the Art Boards have been resurrected, I could find a way to place this there.
In my imagination there is a beautiful atoll somewhere teeming with life. I want this to go there. So it will go.
Off the coast of Isla Mujeres there is an underwater reef of statuary that passes time in silent evolution.
Nothing floats.
We sink into sediment.
We soar into stars.
EDITS
Changed word color to white:
Eratosphere
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