Two days ago, as I was walking to the mailbox, coming back from a short walk toward Forest Street, I saw a small glass shard sparkling in the sunlight. It really did look like a gem. That’s the trouble with what follows. There’s the cliche which is also true; there are awkward lines, rhythms and rhymes; and yet what follows more or less captures the idea I was trying to embody in the verse. In any case, this introduction is by way of an apology. The verse is my little thing and I like it as far as it goes, not good though it be. Sigh!
On the Road
A piece of glass sparkles,
Like a diamond in the sun;
Yards of Black-eyed Susans nod
To every passing one.
Luscious crepe myrtle,
Tossing blossoms every day;
Red and rose and lavender,
Hold forth in fine array.
Wholly holy ground I walk,
A half mile down and back,
Reciting Chaplet prayers each way,
My Fitbit keeping track.
New day (Thursday the 27th of August): I reread the verse. It still does what I wanted it to do; in fact, all twelve lines exist to establish the central idea in line 9. “Phone poem” verse exists primarily for the 6 syllable to 8 syllable line. “On the Road” contains 3 stanzas: syllable count in #1 is 6/7/7/6; #2 is 5/7/7/6; #3 is 7/6/8/6. It’s not difficult to see what the 6 syllable line does in each stanza, since each stanza ends with a line of rhyming 6: sun/one; day/array; back/track. The rhymes, to use a current TV game show phrase, “lock in” and provide closure for the idea in the stanza. The grammatical structure in each stanza also varies nicely again to contribute to the meaning (I think). For example, the first stanza contains two independent clauses. The first clause establishes the precious nature of the experience on the street in the simile (note the proper use of “like”!); the second clause uses personification to humanize the behavior of the flowers. Flowers exist wholly in nature; humans are both in nature and out of nature, for we are rational creatures; Fairway Drive is a neighborhood, where people greet one another regularly.
In the second stanza, there is only one independent clause with the first line establishing the subject; 2 and 3 add modifiers; 4 contains the predicate, the (rather weak) assertion about the subject. I hate to say it, but the structure is more interesting than the assertion. On the street, three of the four crepe myrtles are suffering, with dead wood and ragged blossoms; the red crepe myrtle is currently the loveliest.
Ah, now we are down to the third stanza which is where the walker wanted to be all along. The stanza begins with a loose clause (as opposed to a periodic structure, as in #2), establishing the main idea with a liturgical allusion (“holy holy holy”), and the assertion, “I walk.” The loose structure allows the writer to add modifiers in the next 3 lines, ending with the Fitbit doing the liturgical counting. The Chaplet is The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, in which, like the Rosary, there are 5 decades of recitation: “Eternal Father [sings the leader], I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, [R/] in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world”; then she or he sings, “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, [R/] have mercy on us and on the whole world” [10 repetitions]. In a sense, the Chaplet is hidden in what the Fitbit is doing, just as God is primarily hidden in our lives, and the holiness of the street is hidden in the blacktop. Sadly, I suspect that the explanation is more interesting than the verse; however, you might notice that I had given the verse a great deal of thought too, for about 3 days, off and on.
Two final thoughts on this verse: first, I am the author of the verse, but not the narrator, anymore. When I am dead and gone, the verse will still exist, for a while anyway. Identifying the author with the narrator can be very misleading, especially when the narrator is untrustworthy. T. S. Eliot is dead; Prufrock may or may not be dead, depending on how one reads the ending of the poem. Second, good reading is primarily a matter of seeing what is actually there and how it means, getting inside the work to see with the narrator’s eyes, as in the Frost poem, or even this verse. If you would like to test yourself, read Henry James’ “The Figure in the Carpet,” where the narrator is a blind (metaphor) literary critic who never learns to see the humanity of his task or profession in the story. Or, “The Real Thing,” where the artist narrator does overcome his blindness (metaphor) really to see what or who is in front of him.
Back on Friday, the 28th, fiddling with words and thoughts. In the second stanza I had in the second line, “Popping blossoms,” which I never quite liked; second, I wrote, “Bringing blossoms,” as in bringing new blossoms; then a bit ago, “Springing blossoms” for about two minutes [I still like that]; now it’s “Tossing blossoms every day.” I have stared at the actual blossoms until I have almost gone pop-eyed. “Opening”? That’s what is going on, I think. Each cluster is filled with what look like small berries that then blossom, or so it seems to me.
I am tempted to meddle with the second clause in the first stanza, but its ambiguity and goofiness rather delight me. Enough for the moment. It’s our 54th wedding anniversary today. Now that calls for a goofy verse of some sort.
“Rocky,” the Guardian of the Way: a little farther on…down to the street
From the TV, 1049, EWTN