prose is a house
poetry a man in flames running quite fast through it
Anne Carson, Red Doc>
Why is poetry an emergency?
Why are some poems impossibly slow?
Imagine you are looking out to sea.
Every day for a year.
Some days the water rages. Other days
it chatters. Scatters. Freezes. Whispers.
Rarely is it silent. One vast silver mirror
dumping back a blanked-out sky.
Try a morning when the dog barks you up:
hungry geese are on the lawn.
Unmoored ice shards and founders,
every grassblade dead and yellow.
How long must we
wait for the season to shift?
Slow spring, the kid
at the filling station says. While gas guzzles
You speed off, late for dinner.
Why is poetry an emergency?
Our hearts knock
against a stubborn world. Inside,
forever, the house is on fire.
Notes
Pictures were taken on the West Quoddy dock.
Nets and buoys are for fishing herring. Commercial vessels and pleasure craft in Canada longer than 12 meters are required to carry two or more fire buckets.
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