From the book Interplay: Finding the Keys to Creativity
In your poetry, you make
great use of surreal imagery. Do you have a hard time getting your students to
take similar “flights” in their work?
“They are not used to using
imagination. Most have plenty of it, but they are embarrassed by it, so my job
is to convince them it’s all about taking chances, risking making a fool of
oneself and going for broke. Otherwise, why write?”
--Charles
Simic, poet
Precipitous
Long before I intellectualized
the world into a
windstorm of rods and cones
I recall
standing in the rain
watching a slick of oil as it
snakes down the gutter like a
long, liquid cypress tree
Framing the surface to a
lunchbox-size lake,
I spot a single pockmark
landing and
reverse the telescope
winding it back on a
kitestring to the clouds
where it balances in the
vapor like an
English riding champion
waiting for gravity to
deliver its
unassailable marching orders
Around the corner my
gutterstream
breaks loose, a centrifugal
fan
fingering the asphalt for
flaws and seams
tracking south to an unseen
ocean
I picture myself on a beach
six months later.
I spy my single drop on a
sea lion’s nose and exclaim,
“Friend! How are you?
You’re looking well.”
At what height did I stop
watching the rain?
Five-two? Four-foot-eight?
Short enough only today, only
now
to set aside my junk mail
see a thing for a thing and
inventory the small dramas at
my feet.
First published in
Terrain.org
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