The Poets I have Met - FINAL

Here is the reworked poem in final form for the new book: DUENDE

I remember the first time

the choice came

to string

words together

like jewels,

choosing how much space

to place between

the words and lines

for emphasis.

It did not come of its

own accord – towering

up from within.

It came from their words;

listening, reading, and listening

again to the tempo building beneath

the lines

– in

the words.

The words were

theirs’.

Long elongations  and

truncated cadences marked

the new paths my

jumbled mind

met

my

heart upon.

William Stafford

Christopher Bursk

Robert Bly

Coleman Barks

Allen Ginsberg

Gary Snyder

Robert Hass

Claribel Alegria

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Sharon McPherson

Carolyn Forche

Naomi Shihab Nye

Lucille Clifton

Sharon Olds

Gerald Stern

Stanley Kunitz

Mary Oliver

Joyce Carol Oates

Rita Dove

Sekou Sundiata

Adrienne Rich

Marge Piercy

Their words have

carved out lines around

my soul; rivulets

of meaning carry

gold and diamond

dust

from the mines of

poetic-quarry

to the place in me

that strikes upon their

meaning with an assayers

hunger for

the mother-load.

They have built pathways

in me that call forth

the words.

Words stringing

together the dirt from under

their own nails into the

dirt we slave men upon

to dig for diamonds.

Their words

are bridges of elegant

anarchy and civil

disobedience.

Passing through me

with magnetic accuracy

to that one place

on the line of words

that will give them their

fullest-worth.

They will only

find more-worth as

days grow on days

and my owning meaning

is composite with theirs

in the metamorphic

process of weathering

heat:

through pain;

a weathering through sorrow

with deep and eternal

sighs.

Those everlasting poets

have gone down and in

to the fabulous mineshafts of

layered meaning and

shine in the center of my me;

the place from which

all truth rises to the air;

rises to its place

in the sun.

Each of their hands

I have shaken;

hoping beyond all

hope for a simple transmutation

of my cells into theirs’.

It cannot come through

simple touch,

I must eat the cinders

of their burning poems;

chew the nutrients from

their discontent and longing;

smelt the meaning from their

mineral rich interpretation

of daffodils and defiance,

of diadems and inequality,

of quasars, quarks, and

obstreperous lobbying to

find a way to save the earth,

elevate the poor, and sing

the body electric of the

human condition beyond soul and

extravagance.

They fought and fought and fought

until the opulence of their

own perspective of themselves

was lost in a syncopated beat from

the one heart-truth of what it means to

be a member of this

family growing toward a unique and

common end – albeit unknown to most.

The poets I have met

all reached out toward the

whole with words that would

awaken the infinitesimal sparks

of being and delight to the

notion that it is all one;

nothing is forgotten;

everything belongs.

I must eat the cinders

of those everlasting poets

who have gone down and in

to the fabulous mineshafts of

layered meaning and

shine in the center of my me;

the place from which

all truth rises to the air;

rises to its place

in the sun.

  

Vincent van Gogh's Coal Gatherers