Thursday 16 December 2010

On the Nature of Snow-Angels

It’s time I wrote my saving grace
my fallen epic-centred skit,
for in this race too oft-dismissed
my time may yet be deftly cut
and missed, and wishes left
behind the curtain, better
left behind the curtain, may
yet be cut too short.

But what of the turning grace,
that one desired hook and
line to turn a face to crumpling
skin and bone?

Let loose my poet’s lust,
let it out of my control and see
what temptations come about.

Shrug off the shackles of iambic
and the frantic search
for rhyming gambits, you poetic
Romantics. And scrap syllabic
counting, free the poetry’s
potential.

But what am I really releasing?
It is me I am setting free.
It is me, this poem is,
set in the safety of my mind,
dispersed across the page and
blown like winter leaves
(just one poetic cliché, please)
across the minds of my dear
desired readership, hip hip
hooray!

What a day for leasing others’
poem’s unoriginal themes. What a
day for anthologies.
Seems snow is a famous one,
every other incorporated it,
and apt, it is, for snow
has come, and at Christmas too;
drops of flashing colours twinkle
through the gauze on peoples’
houses; homes snow-
born bereft and caged, their
families inside and trapped,
where nothing stirs, not even a
mouse...

I fancy the ideal’s corrupt,
the snow-angels remain outside,
remnants of them kicked from
shoes and melted once inside.

But that is how it goes,
in the search for imperfection,
‘cause there are no absolutes
in the duress of our relations,
and it’s folly to molly-coddle
the resolutions of the old;
keep moving and expanding,
building potential from the snow,
so when it melts there remains
the solid grounding of your growing,
moving, plate-tectonic shifting,
perma-idealistic psyche.

For a further grounding in reality
see the symbolic tree as it grows
in my arboretum, the sum of its
branches like the thoughts of poets,
and Creatives, and such-like;
such that the tree grows as
though drawn, not by sun,
but by soughing after sparks
as thin as air, disparate
sparks of originality,
daring to drink, think and be.

I’ll take this and bed it now,
and like it but never love,
smile at it quietly.

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