Drayage

~ qbit

“I’m unsure if all of me returned”
– Jim Harrison (Day Eleven – 28 Days of Unreason)

Like a broken clock
Even a poet can be right
Twice a day.

Once at the hour of felony,
When our eyes are hunted
And our sins sharp.

Once at the instant when vertigo
Pitches over the horizon
And we are too dizzy to pray.

Don’t look down or you will see
All the words lost along the way,
Strewn like shavings on the floor.

We jiggle truth
To shake some loose,
So take what you can carry.

43 thoughts on “Drayage”

  2. Those last two stanzas are amazingly Harrisonesque… yet, they are totally your own voice. You wrestle well between the prompt and your own themes, ghosts, whimsies. Fun stuff to read!

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  4. So, I linked one of your earlier poems in my post (shout-outs) for today & Open Link and now I think I should change it to this one. (Hopefully you are posting this one there tonight.) Amazing poetry! From that strictly analytical position, the opening line(s) of the poem gives us an inaccruate sense of where you actually go – excellent!! Additionally, the last line draws in the title which is like a marketing technique; your reader is taken back to the top. I love that! Enjoying how you are wrestling with the Harrison words and taking them to the mat every time.

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    1. Thank you so much! Particularly for these challenges of yours, which have been very productive for me (both the July challenge and this one). I did just post in OLN, thanks for reminding me!!

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          1. I am determined to prevent that from happening, but I know how the first few weeks can be. My goal is to hit dVerse at least once a week (maybe more) and dive into the Casting Bricks Challenge. As far as personal writing time – well, coffee is essential.

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  5. I really enjoyed this. There’s a definite break after the third stanza, almost as if you’ve brought two poems together here, but it’s a good balance.I agree with S about the power in the second and third stanzas.

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    1. Thank you. Yes, definitely a shift after the third stanza. Not two poems, but many false starts after the first stanzas were written and the last stanzas were the least terrible of those. I decided though that I could try and bend everything back into a more unified vision, but would probably wreck the whole thing in the process. After letting it sit a while, it started to actually seem interesting this way.

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  7. Being a poet can be tedious and messy. We swirl through words like a tornado, and most are strewn for miles around. Your last lines are especially unforgettable. Truth jiggling is a lost art! 😀

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  12. Oh , I enjoyed this poem! From the truth of the opening stanza, to the sharp sins and the words ‘strewn like shavings on the floor.’. I particularly loved the lines:
    ‘…at the instant when vertigo
    Pitches over the horizon
    And we are too dizzy to pray’;

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  15. Yes, this does seem to veer off in different directions…just like our minds when trying to convey just the right concept. Love those last two verses especially…excellent!
    Gayle ~

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