Getting Down To The Sound
© S. Ingraham and lightshedder.com

A Raft of Words

The poem, for the poet, is a raft of words built on the beach,
phrase planks lashed together as they pop up,
pounded into stanza decks as they surface,
with a sail white as a blank sheet of paper,
only waiting a wind of breath to catch it,
to send it sailing out of sight across oceans of imagination,
hand to the tiller, in search of new continents of meaning...

island images where insight sings like rainbow birds in trees of flame...

exotic ports where half-naked natives of heart in dugout canoes
throw fruit and flowers (and sometimes spears)...

anchorages off uninhabited landfalls
where streams of unknown and unsuspected significance
flow bright across beaches where no foot has ever marred the sand...

quaint harbors that smell and feel of someone else’s home,
as untouchably heart-turning as the sight of supper through a lighted window...

harbors so vivid with strangeness they look painted, pallet knife layered in acrylics
straight from the tube, on an impossible canvas sky...

the long level equatorial runs between islands,
where the sun comes down so hard and straight it strikes sparks from the sea
and sets them to burn, stars in the infinite, sea-dark, night...

afternoons, on the lee tack,
when you let down nets for the weird, ancient fish of mid-ocean,
and swim, on a rope, over the side,
daring dolphins, brothers and sisters of the deep, vibrant,
laughing and too-wise with water knowing, to play...

and then, the storms...

the gales of laughter, the tempests of tears, the typhoons of self-pity,
waterspouts of inspiration, squalls of anger, rigging-ripping,
sail-shredding, stay-singing, upheavals that wash the decks,
and throw the sea in your teeth as they tear the breath out of you
and drown you where you stand or fight or flee beyond hope
to a new dawn and quiet seas out of all expectation...


and so, in the manner of all mariners, voyaging home at last,
home to the harbor, home to the hearth,
home to the land of commerce and industry,
honor and duty, love and obligation, the joys and frustrations of the everyday,
where the ocean is only a tang on the morning air,
a stir on the listening ear in moments of silence,
a longing behind each moment and each breath,
that carries us back and back to the beach to see what raft-stuff has washed up,
that makes us live always with a sail set in our minds
and one eye on the sea.


The Gift of Falling

When the breath runs down,
over,
around
and through the words
like water in a rocky stream
carving meaning from the air as the stream does,
all crystal splash and splutter,
froth and bubble,
surge and swell and tumble,
the pure urge,
the force of falling,
full, beyond wonder,
with music...

well then,
what have you got
if not
a poem?

Of course there are the level lines
where water runs full still and deep,
the power submerged and pulsing on
'tween banks of purpose, manly made;
the breath contained, the music tamed,
to beat the intent deeper deep
until the heart bursts into mind
and breath leaps banks to drive the meaning home.

Ah well
there's power enough there too
to make a poem.

Its all one really
(though I prefer my water free)
for in the end the breath runs down
and, if it is a poem,
leaves you gasping, drenched
beyond words with meaning
on the silent shore.

Ah, you see...
its all there, the poetry, the poem,
in the simple gift of falling.

So What Is It?

So what is it with this morning?

Everything I touch turns to poetry.
I can’t frame a thought without the words
marching off to their own drummer,
carrying me, willy-nilly, with them,
captive of my own invention,
discovering intention in every turn of phrase.

The whole world rings with poetry.
I can not touch it anywhere but that it sings,
it soars, it pulls my soul out through my mouth
and hands me back myself and all the world covered in splendor.

Oh, that such a day is not mine to keep,
not mine to spend as I would,
that work will take me,
that a thousand prosaic tasks await me.

No!
No more of that!

But let this impulse to poetry settle in me
so deep, so sure, so that anyone encountering me today
will see the poet in my eyes,
will hear the music on my tongue,
be turned and touched and know
that there is wonder in this world beyond our power to say it
without bursting, spontaneously,
into song.

Poetic License

The way the mind works amazes me sometimes.
I am substituting “vulnerable” for “weakened”
before I realize that it chimes with “vitamin” in the lines below,
and reading back I see “avoidance” there too.
(Not here, in another poem I am revising.)

Such a pretty pattern of “Vs” lacing the lines together,
lifting the language just out of the ordinary,
so that it sings a little as you say it,
rings on the ear,
tickles the tongue,
makes it fun,
to say or hear—
while the sense of the thing,
enmeshed in the pattern of sound,
sinks down in the mind to where we play,
and in playing build the world of meaning that matters.

I have been listening to the way the language sounds for so long now
that the patterns are built into my brain.
I am, in fact, programed for poetry,
the software of my speech centers
builds on patterns faster than I can see them,
quicker than thought itself,
reflex and reflection rolled into one,
I find myself saying what I mean
before I know I mean it—
letting the wisdom in the shapes and sounds of the words
carry me to sense.

It looks sometimes, I know, like magic,
but it is really more a habit of the mind,
a trick, even, my tongue and brain have learned
almost without my trying,
almost without my assent,
so that “vitamin,” working backward through “avoidance,”
by way of “weakened,” calls up “vulnerable”
and it looks to you like I always meant to say it.

And perhaps I did.