Disassembled
words like boulders falling
heavy.
Thundering erosion of cliffs
tumble down
the page to a graphite pile
where they
are meant to be with no meaning.
Chip and
break my little stony friends, my
broken lead
to splinter and shear within
my hand. Carve
out the perfect semantic;
riprap for
the wall I build up against
the tide and
the onslaught of words coming
to grind
down my stanzas. Straining keystone;
hold your
ground between the lines of parchment.
Rearrange
and reconstruct, it would not
last through
a winter storm, but because I
write it for
you, this can be your refuge.
By daily
language and conversation,
meanings
tumble like stones in the surf with
no home, as
they lose their edge rolling through
years of
sand. Here they take a stand, among
the fibers,
some darker than others, and
through
metaphor say precisely what I
want if not
what I meant. Finding their way
into the
construction of your harbor,
bits of
jagged rock; purpose in mortar.
So take your
boulders, let us wear them down
to
manageable size, a place for them
we will
find. Pitted, broken walls will stand
once again,
solid. Let me build a book
of lines
that I wrote, woven to hold you
in an
embrace of pebbles and lyrics.
These broken
boulders are your building blocks.
----------------------------------------------------------
Riprap
BY GARY
SNYDER
Lay down
these words
Before your
mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of
place, set
Before the
body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of
bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of
milky way,
straying planets,
These poems,
people,
lost ponies with
Dragging
saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds
like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin
loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite:
ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and
sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
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