I fell in darkness to a place
where water lay, where it seeped
and I dreamt of dreaming.
Sea-beaches sloped beneath the tide,
incoming dusk rolled its clouds, sea-waves ran
sand-dark over ocean black and I thirsted for waking.
Nightfall precipitated the solids of daylight.
Stripped of light, no hope of sunrise,
the horizon left me in sediment,
buried alive like a root.
Lately, I’ve followed the urge to write fewer words. It doesn’t begin that way but the endless whittling cuts and rearranges until very little remains. I’ve said before, it’s like a sculptor finding the figure hidden in the raw stone. In every jumble of words, every assembled pile of trite phrases and half-baked doggerel, there lies a few words worth reading out.
Thus is a poem born…
where water lay, where it seeped
and I dreamt of dreaming.
Sea-beaches sloped beneath the tide,
incoming dusk rolled its clouds, sea-waves ran
sand-dark over ocean black and I thirsted for waking.
Nightfall precipitated the solids of daylight.
Stripped of light, no hope of sunrise,
the horizon left me in sediment,
buried alive like a root.
© BH, 2022
Lately, I’ve followed the urge to write fewer words. It doesn’t begin that way but the endless whittling cuts and rearranges until very little remains. I’ve said before, it’s like a sculptor finding the figure hidden in the raw stone. In every jumble of words, every assembled pile of trite phrases and half-baked doggerel, there lies a few words worth reading out.
Thus is a poem born…
Later, in 2024, I found one of the original edits. The different, slightly longer version 'Aquifer' is now posted. You can decide which is best - as if it mattered…
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