I was struck by Roselle Angwin's latest poem, Birthday. Thanks, Roselle, for letting me reproduce it here.
Birthday
At dawn the air is dense with contrails almost not-there,
yet meadow, hedge and sky are all a-glitter: the time of year
when small migrating spiders launch their bodies into space
on less than a breath, and mesh the light. They can’t know
where they’re landing or even if they’ll arrive; but autumn’s
glow is richer and the day brighter for their risk. Microscopic,
their trust in life is one that we can’t have, with our
knowingness, the way we lumber through our years;
and oh what I’d give to rest this body on space and sky
like that, not caring where I’m going, if my fragile tensile arc
will lasso the future, if I’ll ever get there, or who comes with me.
7 comments:
Wow! Thanks Roselle Angwin and Robert.
Reminded me of Hugh McDiarmid. He wrote about birds but it could have been spiders (On a Raised Beach):
The inward gates of a bird are always open.
It does not know how to shut them.
That is the secret of its song,
But whether any man’s are ajar is doubtful.
I look at these stones and know little about them,
But I know their gates are open too,
Always open, far longer open, than any bird’s can be,
That every one of them has had its gates wide open far longer
Than all birds put together, let alone humanity,
Marvelous poem, and I particularly love this: "Microscopic,/their trust in life is one that we can’t have, with our /knowingness."
The last three lines especially. Thanks you.
Beautiful, but with a sadness running through it Robert.
Thanks for all your comments about this wonderful poem. Roselle told me she wrote it quite quickly, which just goes to show how skill and spontaneity can sometimes conjoin with sparkling results.
Delighted by your posting this, Robert, and by all the kind comments. Also pleased to be alerted to a poem by MacDiarmid that I didn't know.
Thank you all.
Roselle
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