Keeping Things Whole

Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Strand is talking about the feeling of being present and completing the puzzle. When I first read the poem I read it as pessimistic but I reread it and strand is writing about his self worth and appreciating himself and moving forward in life. I like happy poems feels good man.

Summer

BY CONRAD AIKEN

Absolute zero: the locust sings:
summer’s caught in eternity’s rings:
the rock explodes, the planet dies,
we shovel up our verities.

The razor rasps across the face
and in the glass our fleeting race
lit by infinity’s lightning wink
under the thunder tries to think.

In this frail gourd the granite pours
the timeless howls like all outdoors
the sensuous moment builds a wall
open as wind, no wall at all:

while still obedient to valves and knobs
the vascular jukebox throbs and sobs
expounding hope propounding yearning
proposing love, but never learning

or only learning at zero’s gate
like summer’s locust the final hate
formless ice on a formless plain
that was and is and comes again.

The poet uses a AABB pattern, I like when authors use patterns because it makes them think harder about their word choice. my favorite line is “the vascular jukebox throbs and sobs”

Watching the Sea Go by Dana Levin

Thirty seconds of coil and surge,
               fern and froth, thirty seconds
                                of salt, rock, fog, spray.

                                                                           Clouds

moving slowly to the left—

               A door in a rock through which you could see

                                            __

another rock,
                                laved by the weedy tide.

               Like filming breathing—thirty seconds

of tidal drag, fingering
               the smaller stones
                                down the black beach—what color

               was that, aquamarine?
Starfish spread

                                their salmon-colored hands.

                                            __


               I stood and I shot them.

I stood and I watched them
right after I shot them: thirty seconds of smashed sea
while the real sea

thrashed and heaved—

They were the most boring movies ever made.
I wanted

to mount them together and press Play.

__


Thirty seconds of waves colliding.
Kelp

with its open attitudes, seals
riding the swells, curved in a row

just under the water—

the sea,

over and over.
Before it’s over.

The poet is filming the beach but I’m not sure why it’s in thirty second increments. But I like the format the poem is in, it didn’t translate well to the WordPress but the poet shifted each line. I wanna try something like that.