The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

Lovely poem T. Perspectives on staying and travelling threaded with irony and humour as well as insight.

muchly enjoyed

Phil

Hm. Competent write but I suspect your calves are still protesting. Another indirect campaign in your personal war on entropy of the corpus via inhaling the trails in an ever increasing appetite of stamina vs gravity. Hm hm.

Seems to tuck into this collective theme of displaying humility under existential threat. Climb a personal mountain of ambition and discover a dialogue with ants, casual in their adaptation and wisdom. Was spangled/cosmos happenstantial, I wonder?

The piece also begins to fragment half way through but unintentionally so, I believe.
I think I see stuff here that wasn't planted or at least not by the writer. On the face of it, an earnest but self deprecating snapshot - I hauled my aged ass up a serious hill bur so what anyway - aside  from the wisdom of the ant hill.
Perhaps that's enough.  

         

Thanks for your read and comments, Phil, Mark and Jackie.

Mark-- Yes, the wisdom of the ant hill -- perhaps enough.  I appreciate your wry appraisal of this.  Fragmenting? Not sure what you mean.  Seeded? Again, not sure what you mean.  Always love to hear what you have to say.

Jackie -- Yes the intent is the ant to be speaking at the end. I will try to find a way to make that more clear.    Thanks for reading this.


Cheers.

T

There's a saying (Turkish I think) 'Your origin is your destiny'.
This reminds me of that. Kind of like saying the boy is older than the man.
I like the shape of this...so not like a 'Tracy' poem. But such a nice read.

While I enjoyed this and concur with Colm that it is unlike a Tracy poem, I would prefer it with some of the more sentimental language and commentary removed as these parts border on cliché and provide too much author direction/misdirection.

Far beneath my feet the Arkansas River 
collects mountain waters of Grape Creek,...

 a dome feldspar coloured dust. - dome here is religious enough...

and you’ve never seen holy 
    blazes         a symphony of radiance 
        across the night sky– 

like Ants do.
To me simple is better and more in keeping with the tone. Ascribing the ants with too much sentiment makes them too human, running counter to the poem.

Dave

Perhaps you've changed this since I first read it? Which of the two is speaking seems more clear now. But of course it never mattered because ants don't speak so one can only conclude that the dialogue is originating entirely from the N. I understand that can happen when one gets too high in the mountains. Its the old paradox: love where you live and go adventuring. I'm on board with that.

Indar! Welcome back!  
Good to read your wisdom/comments again.

Cheers.

T