[audio:https://www.vianegativa.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Tanka.mp3]
Vanishing when I wake
voice changing to wood thrush song
who are you
I pull the comforter up
over the tangled blankets
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
[audio:https://www.vianegativa.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Tanka.mp3]
Vanishing when I wake
voice changing to wood thrush song
who are you
I pull the comforter up
over the tangled blankets
I wish I could say what this photo does for me, but at the moment I can’t (and I’m a little ticked off about it). I’m an enthralled ticket-holder, sitting on a mile-high stack of theater cushions with no way down but to topple.
That puce, it’s the color of Duccio’s (or a restorer’s) tomb of Lazarus!
Ah, so it is.
Thanks, Bill. Be careful on those cushions, though!
I liked the poem very much as well. I fell from my cushions to bed. One thing, on the side, that I liked about the poem was the strange impression I got of a bed as a nocturnal creature, going to sleep as you get up. I loved the passage to wakefulness, the vividness of the spatial situation. In one reading I you moved and stood looking down on your bed as you carelessly made it. There was magic in how you split from your sleep to arrive at a standing position and how came to look down from the present at the past tense of your sleep.
Thanks for the close reading. I didn’t get all that out of the poem when it emerged from the keyboard, but you’re right, that’s definitely in there. Interesting that in allowing one ambiguity to thrive, I licensed another as well.
This is great Dave. Have a nice night.
Thanks, Michelle. You too.
I misinterpreted the first line when I initially read it: I thought the speaker was saying that he himself vanished upon waking. What kind of being vanishes when it wakes?
One that lives only in dreams.
Wow, I like the way RLC read it!
Donald Finkel had this to say about beds:
the beds never got up at all
pampered in linens
sprawling in perfumed chambers
while on their breasts the gentry
shrieked and sweated
muffling from time to time a sigh
in a diffident pillow
I like that! Thanks for taking the time to share it.