Daily Archives: May 2, 2012

“life is not static or fixed . . . one thing flows into the next, and we are standing in the midst of it, wide-eyed and innocent.” ~ Valerie Andrews

Reblogged from A Poet Reflects:

We cannot stare the strangeness from the leaf, And so we spin all difference on a wheel And blur it into likeness.  So we seize The firefly and teach it human need And mine its phosphor for cold light and call Across the world as if it were a lawn, Blinking awake at summer dusk.  We talk Ceaselessly to things that’s can’t respond Or won’t respond.  What are we talking for? We’re talking to coax hope and love from zero. We’re talking so the brain of the geode Will listen like a garden heliotrope And open its quartz flowers.  We are talking Because speech is a sun, a kind of making. —Mark Jarman, the fourth of a five-sonnet sequence entitled “The World” from Unholy Sonnets (Story Line Press, 2000)

                   

Sonnet IV 

We cannot stare the strangeness from the leaf,
And so we spin all difference on a wheel
And blur it into likeness.  So we seize
The firefly and teach it human need
And mine its phosphor for cold light and call
Across the world as if it were a lawn,
Blinking awake at summer dusk.  We talk
Ceaselessly to things that’s can’t respond
Or won’t respond.  What are we talking for?
We’re talking to coax hope and love from zero.
We’re talking so the brain of the geode
Will listen like a garden heliotrope
And open its quartz flowers.  We are talking
Because speech is a sun, a kind of making.

~ Mark Jarman, the fourth of a five-sonnet sequence entitled “The World” from Unholy Sonnets (Story Line Press, 2000)

                   

Music by Hilary Grist, “Something Beautiful”