Rave On: postcards from Slow Trains
 

   
 


 
Rave on words on printed page... rave on fill the senses...


-Van Morrison
Rave On, John Donne

from The Inarticulate Speech of the Heart CD
 
 
Monday, January 28, 2002
 
Then step out in desire, out of sleep, from desire. For her, the world, the word. Three herons on three stones won't ignore the sun, but aim as if they were compass needles pointing East. I track it too, for no other reason than winter's icy purple. Dream, memory, & present tense. In dream I board a tramp steamer docked in Veracruz, lone votive candle burning on deck. In memory, herons tucked under evergreens over which snow falls, an Oriental screen, leaving them untouched. This present tense attracts the entire expanse of the world with such desire, it disappears. While I continue in the next breath a future, grasped, & past.


Read poetry in Slow Trains Issue 3

Monday, January 21, 2002
 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

         --Leonard Cohen




Friday, January 11, 2002
 
Denver, Colorado

I am putting together a small book of poetry to give to my oldest son when he graduates from high school this May, called "The Enchanted Child, Laughing," because he has always been just that, a joyous child, full of humor and heart, with a laugh that can remind you why people use phrases like "bright new day." I wrote some of the poems for him when he was young, but then there's this long time gap, not unlike the quantity of photos in albums that decrease as kids get older and parents get busy. So I am working on filling in those missing spots -- oh, the pleasure of watching him pitch at Little League games, for example, which I always meant to write about -- but! it is the hardest emotional writing task I have ever undertaken. I figure that by the time I get to the actual graduation ceremony I might not have a single sappy tear left, having done my sentimental work here in the late evenings curled up in my writing armchair while listening to Van Morrison and Miles Davis, remembering.


Saturday, January 05, 2002
 
Brownfield, Maine

Theatre

I drew the circle, one foot in front of the other, then shoveled a wall, seating row, & dance floor well into snow's ground of inscription. A hole in the middle for fire. A last Dionysian act! Under the full moon, in & out of the clouds, the four of us tried to live the moment intensely enough to stand within memory, against Freud's caution that consciousness & memory are mutually exclusive. Before the mirror stage, blue is the first color recognized by the human eye. If that curved line suggested warmth of body, the circle intimated embrace of another, which then reached inward toward beginnings: the barely audible, choric rant.

Read poetry in Slow Trains Issue 3

 

Read the earlier postcards in the archives.

 

 
   
     


   
     


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