Breaking the Line
1.
The bridges are still burning
over the Rhine, the Seine, the Tennessee
our running feet can barely take
the heat, our shoes melting
we weigh the odds of reaching
the other side against those
of surviving a long swim
in the dark river laughing at us
the moment swells until it has no outside
we’re airborne between bridge and river
not falling not moving
stalled in an unexpected time-seam
of intense magnification
the still air is filled with sand-colored light
from the one square eye of a large multicolored bird
with stone feathers on the wall of a Toltec tomb
its stone mind radiating
sharing its energy/mass with us
soon we will be heavy enough to fall
into the laughing river we will become again
have once been but lost unless it recalls us
in the sly reciprocity of forgetting and forgotten
2.
forgetting is a transfer
to a job in a different city
perhaps a foreign city where they speak nerdish
all you need know is a few phrases
gestures and acronyms, body-language
what else you remember seems of little use
at first, until by its sheer persistence
you begin to see what it offers
a venerable old inn sits near the railroad tracks
with wide porches and rocking chairs
overhung with a low roof
like Neanderthal brow ridges
the windows give away golden light
of candles, wood fires, oil lamps
neither more nor less real
than the pale electric present
but older, from outside the current frame
a mental composite of thousands of horizons
integral with every experience
each center of focus needs edges
or it would leak away and not return
it is their edges we grip to pull them back
a hidden welcoming waiting to be noticed
in this new-to-us grey city sending us this reminder
3.
reminders hold us back from the escaping newness
of each moment dragging us away
from all coherence as if we and it
were all ‘freedom’ or if you prefer, ‘chaos’
air hissing from a punctured tire
inside stink from an opened window
the have-you-heard of a gossip
broadcasting someone else’s secrets
if the new were frameless
we wouldn’t see it at all
we and it are both this two-faced rushing-onward
and holding-back, a hooked trout fighting the line
irreconcilable and yet neither would be
without the other
Adm. Nelson breaking the enemy line
at Trafalgar pauses a long moment
in his quarterdeck pacing
his mind far away, mutters calmly:
‘for every line a fish would break
a thousand thousand others wait.’
The Dog Star 
4 Responses to “Breaking the Line”
Hard to know where to start on how much I like this. Worlds within worlds, cuts loose the ordinary mind moorings and looks for what only suffices for now, what is truer than just now. Images of hope and forbearance in a dark tide. Love it.
Trying again..last comment didn’t seem to post…hard to say how much I like this. More honest and patience and wildness than we get in many of today’s poems. Real, imaginary, truth in a song, like Whitman. Worlds within worlds, all full of promise.
Thanks Bro! For both comments, one of which got automatic approval and one I had to approve manually. Who knows why. Both much appreciated. I keep trying to do new kinds of poems, fresh ones, and I keep reading other’s poems, like yours. Which I greatly enjoy.
Craig: Thanks for these. See blog for my replies.
– Don
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