The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 1/31/09

[BlueIris]

For K.

"Measuring the Tyger"

Barrels of chains. Sides of beef stacked in vans.
Water buffalo dragging logs of teak in the river mud
outside Mandalay. Pantocrater in the Byzantium dome.
The mammoth overhead crane bringing slabs of steel
through the dingy light and roar to the giant shear
that cuts the adamantine three-quarter-inch plates
and they flop down. The weight of the mind fractures
the girders and piers of the spirit, spilling out
the heart's melt. Incandescent ingots big as cars
trundling out of titanic mills, red slag scaling off
the brighter metal in the dark. The Monongahela River
below, night's sheen on its belly. Silence except
for the machinery clanging deeper in us. You will
love again, people say. Give it time. Me with time
running out. Day after day of the everyday.
What they call real life, made of eighth-inch gauge.
Newness strutting around as if it were significant.
Irony, neatness and rhyme pretending to be poetry.
I want to go back to that time after Michiko's death
when I cried every day among the trees. To the real.
To the magnitude of pain, of being that much alive.

—Jack Gilbert

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. For K --

:hug:
Is that your dedication or part of the poem?

[BlueIris]

3. My dedication. I've posted several poems for this individual over the last year or so.

I flatter myself that he reads them, or will someday. But even if he doesn't, the spiritualist in me says it's the thought that counts.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. My dear BlueIris...

What a great use of metaphors...

This is heavy and beautiful, all at the same time...

Thank you...

[BlueIris]

4. Thanks, C-Peg. I fear a return to the "heavy" poems, soon.

They just suit my mood.

[BlueIris]

5. Kick.