Prompt:

in poetry we dance

because its easier with words

to knit new rhythms

every time we speak them aloud

i side step the expected

to juxtapose an image

the significance of which

i hope will elude you

and remain just a sequence of letters

ink stains on a page

to which you lend your own history

such invisible connections

are the fleeting moments we inhabit

Notes:

In poetry we dance because its easier with words than rhythm to slide from a solid word and pass the at this point I realised I needed to write longhand, a screen is not my natural medium for poetry composition.

I had seen Abigail’s poem and the prompt had set me thinking about hive minds, the comprehension gap between life forms and Another Roadside Picnic, the book that inspired Tarkovsky’s Stalker, one of my favourite films. I was going down the line of incomprehensible bafflement or this hive mind that looks at one fo the humans through the eyes of the insect and ponders how much they look like their mother and describe her relationship to the hive mind. It would have probably been nothing like that when it was finished.

When I opened envelope 8 I was pleasantly surprised to find rather a splendid piece of [Chinese brush? And] ink work.

I started to get down my impressions on the screen but it never really works for me. I suppose I am too much of a digital immigrant.

This poem was difficult to end. I am still not sure that the end fits the body of the poem. If the poem is about the act of writing and the significance that the reader brings to it, which is what I drew from the image, then does the end work?

I think it needs to go away for some time and be looked at in several months.