Incremental: [adjective] increasing gradually by regular degrees or additions
We do the rounds, list address after address,
then make appointments to inspect the premises;
all the properties we’ve checked are more or less
close: a range of eight to fifteen miles at best
from where we currently reside. New to the process,
we’re warned not to fall in love too quickly or say yes
to everything, not get too attached nor obsessed
with one or another set of charming features, lest
we forget what we’re looking for. Incremental progress
so far— as we calculate, submit to being assessed:
what we’ve earned versus what we haven’t saved, the press
of percentages against the sharp glint of dream. Oh dressed
doorways with welcome mats, driveways and shaded decks—
behind glass we almost see our figures at home, at last.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Aperture
- Familiar
- Landscape, with Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
- Prognosis
- Listings
- Grenadilla
- Aubade
- El Sagrado Corazon
- Consolation
- Three (More) Improvisations
- Reconnaissance
- The Gift
- Goldfinch in the Garden
- Talon
- What Cannot Eat
- Happiness
- Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser
- Defense
- Petition to Fullness
- Heart you Want to Lead in from the Cold
- Unending Lyric
- Trace
- Dear modest four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath
- Shit
- Ode to the Pedicure Place at the Mall
- Defiler
- Letter to Attention
- Real
- Discordant
- Dowsing
- Landscape, with Incipient Questions
- Letter to Stone
- Orison
- Milagrito: Eye of the Raven
- Epithalamium
- What You Don’t Always See
- Going to the Acupuncturist in the Market
- Prospecting
- Migrant Letters
- The Road of Imperfect Attentions
- In the Country of Lost Hours
- Morning Lesson
- Reprieve
- Song of the Seamstress’s Daughter
- Landscape, with Construction Worker, Ants, and Gull
- End Times
- Dream Landscape, with Ray-bans and Leyte Landing
- Pantoum, with Spiderweb and Raindrops
- Assassin’s Wake
- Shroud Villanelle
- Dear Annie Oakley,
- Landscape, with Red Omens
- Late Summer Landscape, with Twilight and Daughters
- Ghazal of Unattainable Silence
- Try
- Occasional
- Distance, Then
- Turning
- Noon Prayer
- Acompañamiento
- In the Convent of Perpetual Adoration
- State of Emergency
- Storm Warning
- Charms
- Goodbye, Irene
- The Lovers
- Currents
- Dream of the Four Directions
- Chainus
- Lost Lyric
- Dear recklessness, dear jeweled
- Gleaning
- Bearing Fire
- The Summer of the Angel of Death
- Veneer
Read this aloud to Martha tonight (we’re house-hunting too, you know!) She liked it.
And here I thought I knew every rhyme scheme any English sonnet would ever have!
Oh lord. We were just looking at places yesterday–it certainly tests one’s visions of self.
So every line rhymes here?!!?? How did you manage to do that so gracefully?!
What interests me about this exercise is how much prosier it sounds than Luisa’s usual offerings, despite — or because of? — the end-rhymed structure. Very interesting effect.
As you can see…architecture (and
loan structures) has been on my mind…
Ditto here, Dave–but not because. More the very long line and irregular meter. Some very interesting sound play with the end sounds. Less, lest, last. Etc.
We just went through house hunting for the first time. I like this little offering very much and feel that this is a subject that deserves an anthology.
Hannah, every line but the last is either -ess or -est. But the very last line doesn’t, and the effect is really striking. When you rhyme that much the non-rhyme jumps out at you. Which is really interesting. Reminds me of the way Old English “alliterates” on initial vowels: the lack of a consonant is, apparently, felt so sharply that its absence qualifies as something rhymable.
Just being me slightly unruly self, Dale… :P
…and of course arguably the last line’s rhyme is slant.
Yeah, but we both know it’s not :-)
Then I am more unruly than you… :)
Enough with the smileys! Don’t you people know how to have a proper poet-fight?
Hmm, I think it is slant, as it picks up so many other similar end words…
Although I have been guilty of writing about high things and then starving the rhyme at the very end and ending on “earth,” so I am sympathetic to unruliness!
Yeah, according to some definitions it would be. I just mean that, in the context of 13 lines of closer rhyme, it’s further from the midline, not closer. A slant rhyme is usually something that edges towards a rhyme; this is edging away.
No more space below your last comment, Dave… so: who’s looking for mano a mano? Rawwrrrr.