Intrusion

[rejectomorph]

I kept thinking it was Monday. The things I had to do, I thought, when I woke fuzzy-brained— but then realized it was Sunday, so I dozed again for a while. Waking from the doze, again I thought it was Monday. All morning, whatever I was doing, Monday kept sticking itself into my head. All afternoon, least distraction brought it on, flipping the page on my brain's calender. No, I'd have to remind myself— Sunday. Waking from a late afternoon nap, there it was again. I suppose Monday will now insinuate itself throughout the evening. And then tomorrow, I'll have to do those things, and Monday will insist on its inviolate territory.

You have all day tomorrow, Monday! Why must you intrude?

Leave me at least a few unsullied hours.




Sunday Verse

Riprap

by Gary Snyder

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
 placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
 in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf or wall
 riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
 straying planets,
These poems, people,
 lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
 and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless 
 four-dimensional
Game of Go.
 ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
 a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
 with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
 all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

Last Tuesday, I kept wishing people a good weekend. That feeling on being in the wrong day is annoying!

I've no doubt told you that I heard Gary Snyder read (or rather declaim, or chant) his poems at IU back in 1972. It was mesmerising. About ten years ago, I wrote a poor poem that, in retrospect, I realize was based on the memory of hearing him -- I was aiming at a kind of incantation of things. I like his poems a lot.

[rejectomorph]

I've never gotten to very many poetry readings. They've always been too far off or held at the wrong times. I did get to hear Octavio Paz read at Cal State Los Angeles in 1986, and heard John Ashberry at the L.A. Theatre Center downtown that same year, but nobody else well known.