Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

Dropped the original intent (and title). Embraced the dithering. Even the syllable count becomes indecisive in the last five stanzas. Thank you again, David Lynch (sarcasm).
- - - - - - - - - - -

Dithering (2024 version 2.0 - final)

Another win? A cold defeat.
Our victors grin
while they flee in retreat.

Come seek with me. We won't get lost. 
You're portent free,
I say we're both star-crossed. 

Abide with us. Close to the heart.
It's dangerous,
we better stay apart.

Moving again. Life iterates.
Dodging the din
at a different place.

Changing careers. Identical aims.
Meet the same peers
with alternative names.

Many circles. Ceaseless replay.
Rounding hurdles,
slowly sneaking away.

Challenge the norm. Shake it askew.
New can barnstorm
along an old breakthrough.

Need some tired tropes. To hide the truth.
Much like the hoax
behind a curtained booth.

Bring out the polls. Let's guess the vote.
Maybe hew holes
in the Lion's showboat. 

Sawhorse swishing. Its twiglike tail.
Pumpkinhead's missing
on the campaign trail.

Commiserate. Just lift the ban.
So Dot can finally date
her junked axeman.

Will Tip return? Surgery's due.
It's Ozma's little U-turn
from Pink to Blue.

Jinjur's legions. Primed for conquest.
Straw boss asks Stevens
where he keeps the war chest.

Strange decorum. A body sprawled.
Schedule the post-mortem,
Mister Baum was mauled.
_

This poem acts as a metaphor - the diver exploring a past (the “wreck”) dealing with women’s oppression. I discovered it recently, looking for something else, and would like to explore more from this poet. Her work is considered “controversial,” perhaps for the time she wrote it. I just love the creative, allegorical aspect of this poem, as it tackles a complex topic.

Deep in the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Haiku by Leigha

The silent patient
Not ready to share her pain
Guarded in her grief

"The Age of Disincarnation" by Wendell Berry

https://www.google.com/search?q=disincar...d31wI,st:0

"A verse repeating
A cool breeze,
Summer in the fields,
And the soul's courtyard
Vacant and sunlit...

Or, in winter, the snowy
Summits in the distance,
The fireside where we sit,
And a poem to tell all this...

The gods grant
Few pleasures beyond
These, which are nothing.
But they also grant
That we want no others."
-- Fernando Pessoa

Art: "Distant Thunder" by Andrew Wyeth

"Dusk fell
and the cold came creeping,
came prickling into our hearts.
As we tucked beaks
into feathers and settled for sleep,
our wings knew.

That night, we dreamed the journey:
ice-blue sky and the yodel of flight,
the sun's pale wafer,
the crisp drink of clouds.
We dreamed ourselves so far aloft
that the earth curved beneath us
and nothing sang but
a whistling vee of light.

When we woke, we were covered with snow.
We rose in a billow of white.”
― Joyce Sidman, Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold

"My God, It's Full of Stars" by Tracy K. Smith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSwfvRczm5w

A Message from the Wanderer

By William Stafford

"Today outside your prison I stand
and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
you have relatives outside. And there are
thousands of ways to escape.

Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
and shouted my plans to jailers;
but always new plans occurred to me,
or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
or some stupid jailer would forget
and leave the keys.

Inside, I dreamed of constellations—
those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
heroes that exist only where they are not.

Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as—often, in light, on the open hills—
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then—even before you see—
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.

That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

Now—these few more words, and then I’m
gone: Tell everyone just to remember
their names, and remind others, later, when we
find each other. Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way—
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.

There will be that form in the grass."