progress

It is happening, slowly but surely... at this point, I've cut some of the weaker poems that were in the manuscript, and done some major edits on the ones I want to keep. I've figured out which newer pieces I want to include and a general idea of where I want them - in which section, at least, though not all in a specific order. In fact, it's all progressing a lot faster than I expected, really.

One difficult decision was to leave the poetry dealing with our daughter's death out of this manuscript. The manuscript as it originally stands is more about one's relationship to the world & others & oneself, and I think including the poems about Abigail would distract from that focus. Plus, a lot of the poetry deals with romantic relationships, and if this is the First Year, then jumping ahead to a child's death isn't all that thematically appropriate. I figure I have enough poems to create a book just about Abi, though, so it's not like I won't be putting them out there in the world. Tough decision, though.

Over the weekend - which is shaping up to be a busy weekend, since I have to work tomorrow for my regular job, and also have some freelance articles coming due soon - I'm going to create a PDF of the work as it is now so I can start messing around with the order of the poems. I remember during my senior year at Sarah Lawrence, determining the order of the poems was really challenging. So this could be the part where the process slows down a bit...

For today's poem, I just closed my eyes and picked one. It ended up being one I wrote this past February.

if the night be wild or calm

for death
comes to us all

and how feeble the hand
that once strong, unshaking
held back the unwanted news
warded the glancing blow
now lets the walls of time
batter past it, through it,
collapsing even the fiercest heart

and what leave you behind
or do the sands of time
draw thick to swirl and obscure
the pictures of your life
how look you to the future
through blind eyes, the eyes of art
and legend, silvered eyes to reflect
the soul of the looker?

do you sing with a voiceless mouth now,
beat your fingers muffled on the door
so that only the dogs may hear, and leap
and bark while their owners sigh?
or do those who would hear
bend their heads to a sighing wind
and hark the ancestral song
with a beating heart and glad, glad eyes?

for you too, and no less I
shall lie in the cold calm ground
or sigh as ashes in the wild wind
and shall we be sung
and shall we sing for ourselves?