Action creates
a taste
for itself.
Meaning: once
you've swept
the shelves
of spoons
and plates
you kept
for guests,
it gets harder
not to also
simplify the larder,
not to dismiss
rooms, not to
divest yourself
of all the chairs
but one, not
to test what
singleness can bear,
once you've begun.
- Kay Ryan
When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone,
And the meaning has to go find an author again.
But when we read, its just print – deciphering,
Like frost on a window: we learn the meaning
But lose what the frost is, and all that the world
Pressed so desperately behind
So some time let’s discover how the ink
Feels, to be clutching all that eternity onto
Page after page. But maybe it is better not
To know; ignorance, that wide country,
Rewards you just to accept it. You plunge;
It holds you. And you have to become a rich darkness.
- William Stafford
Whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle
And the dirt
Just to make clear
where they come from
- Charles Oslon
Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four oared helmet,
She can ill afford the chances she must take
In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
A packing case places, and almost any slope
Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical
She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
To something edible. With everything optimal,
She skirts the ditch which would convert
Her shell into a serving dish. She lives
Below luck level; never imagining some lottery
Will turn her load of pottery into wings.
Her only levity is patience,
The sport of truly chastened things.
This isn’t really thesis related at all. I took the day off to help a friend move from one apartment to another and haven’t made any progress on research or writing. However, it has come to my attention that I have a new reader. Holly, you liked the poem by Kay Ryan, so here’s another. Its not exactly an upper but I am tired at the end of a rainy day so it appeals to me right now. I think you’ll like the play of words. Its one of my favorites, really, for getting through difficult times.
State your intentions, Muse. I know you're there.
Dead bards who pined for you have said
You're bright as flame, but fickle as the air.
My pen and I, submerged in a liquid shade,
Much dark can spread, on days and over reams
But without you, no radiance can shed.
Why rustle in the dark, when fledged with fire?
Craze the night with flails of light. Reave
Your turbid shroud. Bestow what I require.
But you're not in the dark. I do believe
I swim, like squid, in clouds of my own make,
To you, offensive. To us both, opaque.
What's constituted so, only a pen
Can penetrate. I have one here; let's go.
- Neal Stephenson
Seas pleat
winds keen
fogs deepen
ships lean no
doubt, and
the lighthouse
keeper keeps
a light for
those left out.
It is intimate
and remote both
for the keeper
and those afloat.
- Kay Ryan