One small step.....
Posted: 06 June 2013
Word Count: 166
Summary: Nothing for six months and then two at once, sorry. Not sure that all of this makes sense but interested to get your views.....
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I am wary of this step,
one small rudderless stride
which turns my sleep.
My foot levers up, lifts
its sole with the silent gulp
of a wing beat.
Its concave swing skates over
stars undulating in
a mud red Rubicon,
its passage irrevocable.
It is a Spring day
fat with growth,
a soon to be obliterated
moment of yellow and blue.
Dandelion clocks blow in the verge
in a slow countdown to zero.
The shadow of my boot ratchets
across gravel, mimics the
wanton cadence of a sun
which kills old men, and young,
in a single stiff limbed vault.
This one step is dense
with a plangent ground bass,
the coupled pendulum of
past and future.
My heel strikes first
stretching a lean thread.
From where I stood
a million songs mute with age,
scores more grow, and graze for
a short time in the long grass.
My weight lands at last.
The moment twines and curves;
in a single breath a star collapses.
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Comments by other Members
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 James Graham at 14:08 on 08 June 2013
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It's a poem that takes time to get to know! But the language and imagery is very inventive and 'invites the reader in' - encourages us to re-read and discover more, which is just what I intend to do. This is how a good but difficult* poem works. If the imagery gives off sparks it makes us want to know the poem better. I'll follow this up.
There are lines here and there that may need to change to make the thought clear. I'll give it some thought.
*'Difficult' makes a poem sound like the Times crossword, a verbal puzzle. It's not like that at all; a 'difficult' poem is one that demands more of the reader, which is fine - you should sometimes expect readers to do some of the work.
James.
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James Graham at 20:44 on 10 June 2013
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Nick, your poem is still inviting me in, but so far I can’t seem to find the way in. I have some questions.
1. Is there an actual physical step, say across a stream? Is the poem based on you, or the narrator, taking an actual, somewhat precarious step?
I don’t mean the poem is only about that. The step isn’t just literal, it’s metaphorical too - in the sense of someone making a life-change, a crossing of a Rubicon, a change from which there’s no turning back.
2. Is it an account of a dream? There’s a hint of this in ‘...which turns my sleep’.
3. The step seems pretty dramatic, almost life-threatening. A fearful step. Once taken, it’s ‘irrevocable’. The Spring day may soon be ‘obliterated’ and the dandelion clocks are counting down to zero. This is how I understand the second stanza; the first two stanzas seem clear enough. But could you explain:
...the
wanton cadence of a sun
which kills old men, and young,
in a single stiff limbed vault. |
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In what sense does the sun kill young men and old? And why a ‘single’ vault?
4. I’m a bit disoriented by the sun and stars being present at the same time. True, there’s a ‘coupled pendulum of past and future’, which could suggest that somehow it’s both day and night at the same time. As I write this it has just occurred to me that the ‘stars undulating’ may simply be sparkles on the surface of water, so maybe there’s no problem.
It’s still quite hard to get hold of this poem. As I said before, much of the imagery is vivid and inventive; the musical motifs you have towards the end - the ‘cadence’ of the sun, the ‘ground bass’, the ‘million songs mute with age’ - are especially striking. Yet somehow I can’t answer the question ‘What’s it about?’ Of course, just because I don’t get it doesn’t necessarily mean nobody else will!
James.
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 nickb at 22:09 on 11 June 2013
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Hi James, I had a feeling that the poem isn't as clear as it should be and your questions bear this out. I have a habit of latching on to a phrase which sounds good to me but doesn't always fit the context.
It is really all about time, and the passing of time. I had in my mind an actual physical step, and the fact that by the time I have taken that step time has passed and cannot be recovered. In the same way, a day passes, or a season, with the same inevitability. What I was also trying to get across, in a muddled sort of way, is the curious nature of time and events relative to each other. A single step, or a cosmic event lasting aeons, it all seems to me to be part of the same thing. I guess it comes down to entropy.
Not sure that's made it any clearer....where's Brian Cox when you need him?
Nick
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James Graham at 10:50 on 14 June 2013
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Hi Nick - You probably know this yourself, but I’d like to emphasise that this is an idea you should hold on to. You should NOT abandon this poem.
I have a published poem called ‘Tribe’ which I’m happy with now but which was nearly 10 years in the making. If you’d seen the first draft you wouldn’t have had a clue what I was on about. Take my word for it - it was flapdoodle. (I like that bit of American slang.) Your poem, as it stands, is a lot better: the ideas are discernible but it falls just a bit short of the kind of clarity you need.
For me the core ideas to hold on to would be:
1. A ‘narrative’ of a single step across a stream. The action described in ‘slow motion’ - all its stages, lifting the foot, foot in the air, its shadow, landing heel first, the other foot follows.
2. Either interwoven with this or in a separate stanza, imagery of all the changes that seem to be happening during the passage of time the step takes.
3. All this somehow set alongside other ‘steps’, other passages of time. The best choice might be spring to winter, not in slow motion this time but ‘fast forward’.
4. The formation, life and death of a star. Or Big Bang to Big Crunch. The longest passage of time we can imagine.
From experience I can say that inspiration can sometimes work better than thought. I mean, I’ve sometimes laboured with furrowed brows over words, word order, images, line-breaks etc and given up - then come back to the poem after a while, read it again, and something happened that made me punch the air and say ‘Yes!’ like a golfer who’s just shot a hole in one. Maybe you should leave this one - for 10 days maybe rather than 10 years - then come back to it and see what happens.
Anyway, however you deal with it, don’t give up on it - it contains a real insight. Probably you weren’t going to anyway.
James.
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nickb at 12:20 on 14 June 2013
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Thanks James, good advice I think. I sort of know what I'm trying to achieve but struggling to get there. It's encouraging to know that it's not just a load of old tosh. I'll leave it a week or two and return to it with a glass of red and see what happens.
Thanks again,
Nick
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