The Vanishing Point
All these years
learning to verse,
learning to draw,
learning to live
with my skin on,
it dawns:
there's something sublime
about the line.
In the beginning was the word,
the word nobody heard,
and only the shadow,
only the shadow
knows
where the hell the line goes.
Perhaps
It isn't where
a line begins
or where it ends,
but whether it deems
itself feigned
or suddenly, strangely
ordained.
online
punch line
dateline
pipeline
underline and borderline
bottom line
beeline, shoreline, timberline
and waterline
front line, baseline, byline
fault line
skyline, waistline, neckline
hemline
tagline, hard line deadline
lifeline
Says Rudolf Arnheim, the line that describes the beautiful is elliptical. It has simplicity and constant change, and cannot be described by a compass, as it changes direction at every one of its points.
This could also be said of the lyric poem, particularly before beauty, science, and the arts were divorced.
Yes, my child, all things
come from the wild.
Even the arts were once
promiscuous.
If pressed, yes, okay,
downright
polygamous.
Ah, art, oh, modernism! What have you made of the horizon, what have you learned from your physics, what have you done to the line ? The one that vanishes into eternity, into the cloud of the imagined, the line that sweeps our visionary vision up the holy moly mountain or down the deep, dark, mysterious hall -- and in so doing, connects us all ?
Well, the divorce was an ugly one, and I suppose to speak of art this way is pretty sketchy, a bit suspicious, a little too close to religio-speak for the age of reason and all.
North of Mist
Just north of mist,
along the border,
half a color
from the water,
under the kiss
of shadow's daughter,
(two breaths backward,
one word upward),
past the rumpled
terra cotta,
down the salve
of templed sorrow,
up the scales
of Bach, and Buddha,
down the moon
of broken solder,
through the eyes
of someone's father,
in the grass
beside the water;
one part liar,
one part seer,
one part lyric,
one part scholar,
this is the walk
we come to wander,
one part illness,
one part healer.
------
(North of Mist first appeared in Poetry Magazine)
