In endeavoring to write a blog that captured a palpable sense of intimacy with a landscape I struggled. Everything that I wrote began to become a prose poem, and (I think like most of the prose work I do) the work then begged to be more lyrical.
So I wrote a poem. And a love poem at that! I cannot remember the last piece that I have done that I would consider a “love” poem.
Love is one of those words I have always shied away from. In a lot of my poems I seek to concretely define the subject. Similarly to the divine, I think that love struggles to be defined by the poet (if it can be at all). This indefinable quality is also apparent to me when I look out into nature. All three; the divine, love, and nature feel intimidating and slightly off putting for me to write poetry about.
Why do I hide in my poetry from what I fail do define? Are they really too big for the voice, my poem?
Apparently, I decided it would be a good idea to try and tackle two of my “big three” tonight. Not sure how it will work out, but this is a short love poem to the landscape I grew up in, central PA.
My Great Love
Love, you are Central Pennsylvania.
I need rest,
so I am driving to you.
There is no sleep
without love,
No love without spectacle.
You, with your roads
exhaling through the rolling hills
like long breaths.
You, with your railway,
curved and arched,
the back of my ballerina.
You, with your shallow rivers
that ride your hips, low
like gray sweatpants.
Central Pennsylvania, you
are Juliet,
Cleopatra, and Isolde.
In the morning,
here, now,
I lay in your bed.
The sun,
breaking behind
felt February clouds.
You consider me
as yours, you beg
that my eyes stay closed,
that I stay in bed.
You say, Please, and pull the blinds,
rest with me a little longer.
Cory, thanks so much for sharing that very intimate moment between you and Central PA! As stated in our directions for the week, I got a "real and palpable sense" of how much your homeland means to you. Would you have written a poem like this without the prompt this week? I am going to guess that you would not have used this intimate metaphor, of your homeland being a lover. It's such an unusual, poignant poem that I have to say that I am a definite fan of writing prompts and exercises that might take us out of our usual direction.
ReplyDeleteI got the sense that you were driving down some back roads on a leisurely Sunday afternoon. The tone and mood is content and admiration for the land. I love the metaphor of laying in the bed and I picture that as you say that you are driving through a valley.
The tension in the last three stanzas was effective.
Bravo!
That's the way you have to tackle those big issues that hang over our collective poetic heads. They're so damn big that I think we, as writers, have to go about defining them for ourselves, through ourselves. I guess we have to go about understanding them the same way we go about understanding spaces.
ReplyDeleteAnd the three parallel "You" stanzas are a strong touch. They really grabbed me.
There's something in there, that you were struggling to write about intimacy to place and what came out was a love poem - a lovely one! - to your birthplace. I wonder if perhaps there are still enough remnants left of that which you feel like you have lost.
ReplyDeleteI was really moved by those apostrophes to Central PA (You...You....You...) There's something about understanding your "inability" to write about it that makes the emotional tension of the poem so palpable. And that's all in the poem -- you didn't need to tell me that you had a tense (but loving) relationship with your home. It was all there; lovely and well done.
ReplyDeleteI love the phrase "roads exhaling." Really beautiful. And it gives me this sense of spiraling, flowing, forever roads. And the idea of "resting" is powerful...in light of our previous readings about home as a place of rest and security. Nice.
ReplyDeleteCory, what a gorgeous poem! I love the whole thing, but especially the last stanza and the final, italicized line. Well done.
ReplyDelete