In the interest of stoking the impetus for having the word “bard” in this blog’s tagline, I’ll post the first of a multi-part, as yet unfinished poem I’ve been updating for several weeks (perhaps months). I believe I started it just before last quarter’s finals. Enjoy. Critique. 

{One}

The long-drawn poem

The descent of words

Lapses of Green Trees

Lording over dead leaves

 

When things move

We needn’t presume

Why it is

That they do

 

And when a leaf

Slips beneath

The sole of my shoe–

 

Scarcely a thought

Until I ought

Be moved.

 

Places and people

Ceasing to move

Move most

 

Move most to counter

The wind and passing sky–

Why slip my eye?

 

My eye slips away

Faster than the day,

Of course

 

Of course the day

She moves suspended

In the amber light 

Of watery molasses

 

Words held in her color

Pulling the shade down

Binding the drapes across

 

Sun’s chariot gravitating 

Around my chair while I tire

Her light sucked through a wire

 

Words are drawn up on my sky

Words are burned on the shade

to the window of my soul

 

Words tremble in the marrow

Of purple blood 

Where they gasp

 

Like I do 

Even you,

Evening too.