Sharp sounds impact only the thin skin of this drum, this timpanum, and then bounce like mallets, making music of this cave, plucking the threads of this skein. They will have no other impact. In this chamber, their soft timbres, their reverberations and distortions are breath.
A Prayer Like Gravity
Mundus vult decipi
A Prayer Like Gravity 
I’ve read this over a number of times and although I enjoy the mysterious ethereal quality, my literal self wants to place it….is it a memory?
My grandson was born yesterday, Gravity….I hold him and look at him touching his cheek…you’re real little man!!! And now coming back to read your poem, I can feel the world he just came from… inside my daughter who once lived inside of me and I’m still in awe we are all real…alive, flesh, moving…breathing
So I’m not sure what originally inspired this poem… but see where it has flown
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Congratulations, Grandma!
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Big Congratulations J–a new little spark of Light in the world–Wonderful!
That is totally not where this piece came from originally but
that is totally AWESOME that it has flown to such heights!
My original thought with this was of “sharp sounds” being the “sticks and stones” of verbal/social life, combined with their physiological impact on the ear (the “tympanum”) and what can happen when they are internalized both physically and psychologically. I was thinking how important it is in life (but especially as a poet) to be receptive to things even if they seem very negative and “sharp” at the time of contact.
It’s funny, but I originally had “…are mine.” as the last line but decided that was too personal–too controlling–and changed it at the last minute.
Ultimately, I think that regardless of where I came from with this, where I was going is exactly where you found this (and me in it…). I am sure that this process of internalization/personalization/actuation begins in the womb and that first light, those first unsoftened sounds, are the first of many harsh but necessary adjustments to life.
Thank you for this reading–
Always a pleasure–
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The organic quality of this appeals to both the the doctor part of me and to the poet part. Good going.
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Thanks A–turns out it was more organic than I realized at the time…I love being surprised by my own poems!
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🙂
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John, this is gorgeous. I see a body being made music of.
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Thank you, Susan. I love how you put that, “being made music of.” Brings to mind the idea of the contingency of the self, that we do not exist as separate, cut-off “things” but as conditional elements of the environment around us.
I am just as much
the-sound-being-heard-by-a-man
as I am
the-man-hearing-a-sound….
…these two are one…
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Yes, well said. There are days reading you makes me speak poetry. This was one of them 😉
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“Aw..shucks,” (…he says…ringing his hat behind his back whilst kicking a pebble and batting his eyes…).
😉
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Love how you worded that. Hmmm. Did I make the crab blush?
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…sure did…
…went from Blue Swimmer
to Alaskan King…
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ROFL!
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