Literature will lose, sunlight will win, don’t worry
Writing is shadow. Tear it from the heel.
Sow it back, Wendy, darling. We,
the flowers, bend our heads to stories,
tomes and Hammurabi for nutrients —
wind up walking, noticing.
Eureka! Stuck a flag in eternity.
Turns out it’s a Douglas Fir on Mount Si
that endured fire to hum memories. If
we’d known the rules to the infinite game
then we might have placed
hands on every shoulder, knowing
there were wings.
-
Did you even dream we could dance this slow?
Laying in the tallgrass to feel the Earth spin.
This poem is in conversation with the idea of permanence/endurance and suggests that literature/writing is not an end in itself. Instead, it seeks to connect the reader back to the world in a new way. I also love the Peter Pan story… so had to squeeze that into the beginning :)
Title taken from a line in Publication Date by Franz Wright
“We the flowers, bend our heads to…” reminds me of this incredible song by Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins