Interlude (28)

How did the interludes get to #28? Time flies in the way life meanders.

But here’s an update. Part 34 has a home in Via Negativa’s digest for Week 7 of 2023. Read the collection here. And Part 35 is in the Week 8 selection of blog posts. Read it here. Thank you, Dave Bonta for the home away from home for these poems.

And now a poem from July 2018. It was written in response to an ekphrastic prompt and when you read it, you might agree it should be in here as Part 00 (a foreword, a note…??). Actually, I think I should steal the title of the poem for the whole story. The original post is here.  Am sharing without a single edit.

A Crow That Became A Line

It’s supposed to be a book, a story, but I wish I could start with
a poem instead, there’s something about leaving things half

said, something about a handful of metaphors and line breaks,
that wear their brevity proudly, there aren’t that many words

in the beginning anyway, just an uncertain awkwardness that
stumbles over ellipses, saying little, saying a little. A verse about

a day that wasn’t supposed to be, but was, about a time that
wasn’t meant to mean anything, but did, about the big things

unremembered, about tiny details that stay in the empty frame
like disconnected dots. There was a crow outside the window that

day, watching, as birds aren’t expected to, but do, like a sadness,
an inadvertent new moon, a crow that became a line in the sky,

in the beginning anyway when there were no words. With a poem, I
can stop here. You never speak. The poem becomes the whole story.