Email to the Buffalo
08/28/08 3:51 PM Bersone:
There's more to this than meets the eye. I'll attach latest version
-- it's a little thing, I know, just something I noted down while driving to work -- it's easier to get going on lighter things sometimes. I've had my trouble getting going after the last two weeks.
Going Too Fast To Stop
Something has fallen off the truck
What’s in the package
That tumbled from the truck
Still taped up
It bounces on its corners
As another truck blows past it
What’s in the package
Bouncing along the concrete wall
The wall between the bridge
The bridge and the gray cold water
With its murky facets
Below the low dawn sky
Is there something of ourselves
Wrapped in the package
That will never be opened
The package bouncing fatefully
Only a short wall
Between it and the water
It seems to jump by itself
But that’s only the momentum of its fall
Whatever of ourselves is inside
Is at the mercy of its fate
It has no inner direction whatsoever
But there’s something in that goddamn package
I tell you
It’s jumping by itself
Like a Mexican jumping bean
There’s something inside
And it has fallen off the truck
Still taped up!
08/28/08 5:21 PM Buff:
Yes, yes. Getting tight. It’s a fascinating concept – something of us in a taped up package bouncing down the road as if of its own accord – something alive yet hidden, unknowable except in the imagination – something we must trust about ourselves. Fascinating. It holds the reader like a magnet.
08/28/08 3:51 PM Bersone:
There's more to this than meets the eye. I'll attach latest version
-- it's a little thing, I know, just something I noted down while driving to work -- it's easier to get going on lighter things sometimes. I've had my trouble getting going after the last two weeks.
Going Too Fast To Stop
Something has fallen off the truck
What’s in the package
That tumbled from the truck
Still taped up
It bounces on its corners
As another truck blows past it
What’s in the package
Bouncing along the concrete wall
The wall between the bridge
The bridge and the gray cold water
With its murky facets
Below the low dawn sky
Is there something of ourselves
Wrapped in the package
That will never be opened
The package bouncing fatefully
Only a short wall
Between it and the water
It seems to jump by itself
But that’s only the momentum of its fall
Whatever of ourselves is inside
Is at the mercy of its fate
It has no inner direction whatsoever
But there’s something in that goddamn package
I tell you
It’s jumping by itself
Like a Mexican jumping bean
There’s something inside
And it has fallen off the truck
Still taped up!
08/28/08 5:21 PM Buff:
Yes, yes. Getting tight. It’s a fascinating concept – something of us in a taped up package bouncing down the road as if of its own accord – something alive yet hidden, unknowable except in the imagination – something we must trust about ourselves. Fascinating. It holds the reader like a magnet.
08/28/08 2:13 PM Buff:
I shouldn’t do this, but I’m attaching something that has occupied my attention for the last few days. Can’t quite seem to make anything out of it, but still feel there might be something there.
THE WIND
By your will does this wind blow
Through the hollow chambers
Of this ailing heart.
Is that your voice I hear,
Or the craggy surface of the mountain
laughing at these tears?
Over the breathing sea
Salt air whispers,
Shhh, I bring you life,
Shhh, I breathe for you,
Shhh, I give you dreams.
Sand rises from the desert floor,
Riding the wind like flocks of sparrows.
Dust settles on the mountain pine,
Where Jays feed on nuts and insects.
All great lands and seas comingle,
Riding on the wind,
The song of earth.
By your will does this great wind blow
Through the hollow chambers
Of this ailing heart.
You sing my joy and my grief,
You sing my dream through this long night,
You sing my soul into the darkness,
Yet,
you do not
know my
name.
08/28/08 6:30 PM Bersone:
I just read it through a couple of times: beautiful grief, transcendent yet felt. Your courage and availability, trembling at the brim yet not spilling over: what we learned many times in the sixties: we're surrounded by heroes. When we think about it: two million years of history behind us, every bravery and tenderness making room for each other, like the Italian movie about shoes where the guy hides his gold coin in a horse's hoof: fools, wonderful fools, doing what we do under the indifferent beauty of the stars. The poem is very good. Yeats once said that the mood of tragedy should be sorrowful calm, yet yours lifts, and lifts. It makes you think about wind.
08/20/08 8:52 AM Buff:
Here’s a poem Wendy wrote in response to the news story about the woman who died on the emergency room floor:
Managed Care
Blinding light
Binding plight
Doctor's waiting room
Heart a flight
Wait all night
Prostrate on the floor
Linoleum tile
Magazine pile
In a different room
Cold steel bench
Disinfectant stench
Staring at the door
Dr. Important arrives
Downcast eyes
Tell me why you're here
Pages flutter
Did the Patient mutter?
What, I didn't hear
08/21/08 7:05 AM Bersone:
Doctor Important! That's classic. Form is tight, strict rhythm. I wonder who she's read to write so disciplined. If it's natural, it's rare. Emily Dickenson-like, compact. I'll have to read her blog and drop her a note. Next week or this weekend I hope. It excites me to talk to Wendy about poetry. Dr. Important, that kills me.
08/27/08 9:05 AM Bersone:
This is to you Wendy: a note to tell you how much I liked your poem: very well-observed, and felt: the tough eye in the poem keeps the feelings in check, making them stronger by such severe containment and we get the wonderful humor as a result. Terza Rima I think, the form, I'll have to look it up. An Italian form. The magazines! Who doesn't notice them in those surroundings! There's a couple of lines in a Leonard Cohen song: "on a chair with a dead magazine / in a room where love's never been" Anyway, great poem. Says a lot for everyone. All my best to you and hope to hear more poetry from you. Stan Rice would have loved you poem.
-- Gene
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