A House in Amherst
Never harmed in an attic,
wandering dust pollutes her nostrils.
A bray outside alerts her ears.
A mangled swan has been caught in a tractor.
Her father, the farmer, yells,
"Shit." and she hears his boots thump on the ground.
The seat of the tractor is raised six or seven feet
and he eschewed the step-ladder.
She hears some awkward noise.
Something she cannot discern,
and which she cannot see,
even in her mind's eye.
Her father is grunting,
his sons are hollering from the fields–
She continues her needlework,
more nervous than before.
Inevitably, she pricks herself.
Blood, strong at first,
then small,
drips from an invisible point on her finger.
The noise outside begins to calm.
(there is really nothing to do
about the swan)
And her mother rings the bell for lunch.
She thinks about the thought of food–
She begins to write a poem instead.
posted by Jackie | 11:07 PM
2 Comments:
I think this poem is ingenious in many ways. With the montage of scenes with a series of cross-cutting stitched together, it almost seems like a film of some sort--- a silent film where the mood gradually builds up into an anti-climax.
Thank you! It was inspired by... oh dare I give it away? (Well the title already gives it away...)
Not by a poem, but by the life of a certain poet...
I'll let you search for that one =P
But thank you. I think the idea of a montage with slightly shifting emotions in each frame works very well to describe what I was trying to do implicitly.
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