October 18, 2010
Monday Poem
Flash Fires
If these thoughts became fossils
they might be found by some
neuro-paleontologist in time to come
buried among those of others
pressed in the strata of notions
like carcasses of trilobites in stone
or the bony ghost of a pointing finger
caught in basalt —but they will not be
These thoughts are here and gone
like the flickerings of fireflies
after being incarnated momentarily
in wind blown through a larynx
and taken by a breeze to ears
into a mind or two and recalled
a few times like echoes
articulated by dancing tongues
and lips of others
until they run out of steam
after perhaps a generation
and vanish
like the smoke of flash fires in a
wilderness
by Jim Culleny
Oct 12, 2010
Posted by Jim Culleny at 12:20 AM | Permalink
Comments
Nice poem.Good vocabulary.
Posted by: Meherzaidi | Oct 18, 2010 5:39:48 AM
Seems a little rash, this assertion that depends so much on contrasting metaphors. Quite biased, I would say, in the direction of what seems fragile and impermanent. But still your language cannot escape the material.
Posted by: Lloyd Mintern | Oct 18, 2010 6:59:58 PM
Nice thoughts
'Hope these would be saved!
Posted by: Ajay | Oct 19, 2010 3:56:14 AM
Lloyd--
Could it ever, being embedded in it?
Posted by: Jim | Oct 19, 2010 7:49:47 AM
I said "your language." In my view, thought is not embedded in language, but quite the reverse; language is embedded in thought, which discovers it. It is therefore for the poet not a matter of escaping at all, but transforming, or even informing, the otherwise merely inert, silent, material language. Your poetry seems to relinquish this task at the outset, and set up choices between the dully physical and the effervescent. This indeed provides no escape, though it gives a temporal thrill for the casual reader.
Posted by: Lloyd Mintern | Oct 19, 2010 2:34:03 PM
Lloyd--
We come at this from different directions. Though I have no problem imagining language being embedded in thought I have no experience that leads me to any other conclusion than that both are embedded in the world or what we call "the material" (I'm using your term, but I don't think "embedded" conveys accurately what I'm trying to say).
In all my years, despite many efforts to the contary, I've noticed that all my experiences of mind are coexistent with my body. I've never had an out of body experience. If you have, great. But I'm stuck with a mind that doesn't seem to operate without a body that has itself issued from a material ecological system in a material universe.
Rather than diminishing mind the poem might be trying to elevate the material by simply recognizing that what I am is a numinous expression of what we call "material" —that the material and the mind are as co-equal as they are co-existent and may both be "sacred".
It may be trying to do this by suggesting that rather than temporality being a bad thing, in being a very real thing it might be inestimably valuable.
Posted by: Jim | Oct 19, 2010 5:55:20 PM
"Embedded" was your term, wasn't it? Oh well, your explanation of what you are trying to do is sufficient. I guess we do try to achieve different things.
Posted by: Lloyd Mintern | Oct 19, 2010 10:12:45 PM
Lloyd--
Well, yes it was (eggonface). Still, not quite the right word.
Posted by: Jim | Oct 20, 2010 6:17:27 AM
Post a comment