A couple routines have been happy features of my weekends: dog-walking, of course, running with fellow coaches around the neighboring village Unetice, taking in hockey games with the gamins, jamming with the new piano, and trying to pen a poem--partly to supply at least one for Lost Menagerie each month, partly because at 97 I'm upon that three-digit threshold of deciding which to revise and compile, partly because it's fun to make connections and share.
In class a couple weeks ago I played a clip of MLK's "street sweeper" speech--hopefully you'll be able to see it from your YouTube provider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlV_ODrEL0k
So that was on my mind when I thought about a launch to February poems. Also on my mind were fugues--somehow songs from Led Zeppelin's only double album begged the question if they were such, and, browsing for definition and stumbling upon fuga for flight, fugere to flee, fugare to chase. It was a delightful 'rabbit hole' to dive into: listening and reading and jotting some notes...
Fugues
in my head and yours,
in Physical Graffiti that
hearkens back to Bach,
in ephemerality and
rather infinite hours
in this curtailed month
that feels like Fargo,
in the marches that lie
behind, fleeing or some-
times chasing. Once
in a while the artform
needs to chance new
rabbit holes, frozen they
may be; enter you and
me, faithfully forsworn.
Falling in takes no time.
Dr King, calling sweepers
to be like Michelangelo,
tethers pride to gravity:
the beatific low and high
are sides of the common
coin (God guide the life-
long flip). It’s a far way
to go—perhaps Dakota
miles—to fathom Man
and Woman and random
hosts in this menagerie,
to tap into a harmony,
in Feb
. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment