POSTCARD POEMS AND THE 3:15 EXPERIMENT WRAPPING UP FOR ANOTHER YEAR

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September again. Is it possible? August flew past in a tumblesplash of wonderful company, 

End of August, Kootenay Lake

postcards, incoming and outgoing, 

Received, so far

and the 3:15 Experiment in which I only missed two nights this year! That may be my best effort, ever. Mind you, I haven't yet typed them up, or even so much as looked at them, so I may have to take back the bit about 'best'. 

I'll need a new book if I do 3:15 again next year

Back to the postcard fest, as I mentioned in previous posts, I chose to write epigraphs on my cards this year and took them from the 2013 Griffin Anthology of Poetry's seven finalists. What a great way to get to know some new poets! I am now very fond of Brenda Shaughnessy and will be keeping an eye out for more of her work. And Ian Williams. And the two winners, Ghassan Zaqtan and David W. McFadden. It got to be a most interesting exercise, finding two or three lines, applying them somehow to the image on the card, then writing a poem that somehow related to either the image or the epigraph, or both. (Or neither).

It's late, and I want to post this, so I'm just giving you the images of the cards I wrote plus the poems (unedited, other than spacing) without adding information about to whom or where they were sent. I didn't always send in the order of the list. 

Suffice it to say, if you were one of the 31 people whose names were directly beneath mine on the list, I sent you a card. I know some go missing in the mail. I know dogs eat them. I know people forget to put the right postage on them. I did that myself, with two of my cards, but happily I know both of them arrived at their destinations regardless.  Thanks, Canada Post! I know it's better to give than receive, but I'm still hoping to find a few more in my mailbox this month. 

All of the poems were written directly onto the cards. Here are the first seven of the 41 cards I've written so far. And I'm probably not done yet!

“Beneath the light

their dust was coming apart”

                        Ghassan Zaqtan

The ones who felled the trees

knew dust, absolute

and everywhere,

each particle

a blossomed universe,

the forest floor a galaxy

readying itself for an invasion

even the mighty Kauri

could not withstand—

the inhumanity of humans,

dust the only truth.

“My heart has an Embassy

for Ecuador where I will seek

asylum.”

                        Jennifer Maiden

These days you have to

take a number

when you line up

with the asylum-seekers,

whistle-blowers, the woodwork

spilling activists like impure thoughts

at a church convention,

this casual invitation

to the underworld almost welcome

to the look-over-your-shoulder crowd.

  “The present tense

is the body’s past tense

here.”
                        Alan Shapiro

Am I, with this

distracted scratch of pen,

leaving anything at all

to be found in eons hence

by someone shuffling through

sheaf of letters long forgotten,

past and present drawn

in petroglyphs of story,

tentative and touching,

an uncertain sigh,

a story writ in stone.

“He howls with such fury and clarity

I must believe him.”

                        Brenda Shaughnessy

Belief—a fractured 

concept I’m loath

to trust, remember

minnows at lake’s edge

fleeing my clutching hand,

evaporation the first thing

on their tiny minds,

the abomination of touch.

“Thank God I’ve forgotten

my desire for perfection.
It was in my blood, then one day it left me.”
                        David W. McFadden

You, over whom I lost my head

are no more than a mirage,

a broken sunbeam trapped

by moths ascending,

once I swore I’d die for you,

and you, the intimation was,

            for me.

Then time and time and time

went by the window of our years.

I have to hand it to you—

or I would,

            but I lost them, too.

“the boy inside turns on the lights and sings

the sympathy of not inhuman things.”

                        James Pollock

            Sometimes

            when the hours move

            too slowly

            we take a breath,

            close a book,

            a chapter, a window,

            follow metaphoric dots

            across the wide field

            your mind is,

            that shortest distance

            from me to you.

“Problem is

            we did not want children. Problem is we did

            not want each other until too late.”

                                    Ian Williams

                

            The town’s namesake no longer

            lives there. Why would she?

            It is not a toothsome place

            to be. Or not to.

            Bee hive in a windstorm

            clearly struts with nature.

            I am so lost, so gone,

            so certain of your next-room

            breathing I cannot wait

            to tell you where I’ve been.

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