SESSION 33 — Walking Through Fog
Photo by Rowan Heuvel on Unsplash
Discussion:
Some poems cannot be approached through logic and reason alone. They can only be experienced, image by image. Like a dark room navigated by touch. Or a walk through a fog-filled forest, where trees suddenly emerge right in front of your nose.
This poem does not announce its meaning. It asks you to hold its hand and walk with it.
What do you feel as the poem unfolds? What does each image awaken in your mind's eye? In your body? What memories, emotions, or associations arise?
Let us close our eyes. Let us touch by scent and taste by hearing.
LeRoy Clarke (7 November 1938 – 27 July 2021) was a visual artist, poet, lecturer/inspirationalist, philosopher and Orisha Leader, who was born in Belmont, Port ofSpain, Trinidad and Tobago.
There is a solitude that burns,
Kin to fruit cursed by a stone
Hurled from the arm of an idle boy.
The wound reveals what is within,
Rises up in the foam of new day,
Its shadow lengthens the riddle:
Time cannot be copied from a book.
To know it, is to know the climb
That reaches up through your branches,
Combing the web of leaves. Learn to close our eyes.
Touch by scent, taste by hearing.
Through you, Eye make my way to that thing
That awaits me to complete itself
And perhaps, only perhaps, fulfill me
In that transparent unspeakable word,
That holds the secret to your name.
A word, a name, a number!
Identical to the prize, perfection
Is the lure, written into the heart with fire
My hands and eyes prove their gift
At the best in the heart of things
Radiant as good conscience
Resonant to your smile.
Writing prompt:
Don’t plan this one, or set out to say anything in particular. This one, we navigate by sight, sound, taste and touch.
Hold a memory, a feeling, a word and write it down. Give it some time to gain substance, to grow round and heavy.
Does it want to draw other words, feelings or images around it? Does it want to leap off the edge into a different pool altogether? Does it want to tie itself to its associates, stringing them along in single file?
Whatever you do, trust the images, and the feelings. Sometimes the poem is right there, waiting to be born.
Sometimes it is its own midwife, waiting with hands outheld to receive itself.