[stylist] Poem - "Memory" - First Draft

[William L Houts]

HI Listers,

Here's this morning's poem.  I'm pretty pleased with it, although it 
seems too short.  Still by  my lights it constitutes an advance in the 
way I approach my poetry.  I'm fairly confident about the value of my 
work, but there's been a trend towards certain devices and the logic.  
In brief, I feel that some of my poems have a kind of hidden locked down 
aspect.  I mean, the rhythm and rhyme feels good to me, but I feel 
there's a kind of ABC linear aspect to my poems.  There are resonances 
and rhymbs, and I'm all fine with that, but I might have been more free 
with associations, more able to let the poem constellate around ideas 
rather than language.

Anyway.  Enjoy, if you will.


--Bill




---


Memory

I was weaned on the hornpipe duet;

the ferry on our cold inland sea,

landing within blocks with a blast

of trumpetlike steel; and the trains,

with their double sharp peal:

somehow a plaintive bull's bawling,

a brass bishop calling the faithful,

the hopeful of heaven to prayer.

No angels there, though, the chorus

is earth-called, man-souled and sea-told,

a father's voice faintly fished up

from memory's Sargasso-like bay:

a picnic, a car wash or porch,

recalled for three minutes one day.


















-- 


"Oh, Sophie!  Whyfore have you eated all de cheeldren?"