Tuesday, March 2, 2010

the poet as oracle


to call forth


when it’s a long haul
and the lifting and the carrying take my main strength,
as the day wears on
I get job after job done,
and, in the afternoon, my eyes get heavy,
heavy like all those projects that I am carrying--

I need a nap,

I need to disengage body and spirit
so each can regroup
and I can then make a new assault--
keep pushing up
until I find a good way forward,

after a short time at the summit
I know a new climb will call me,
as I often feel a need to write call me,

within all the doing and around all the naps
I often feel an absence,
a whirling vortex within me
that strives to fill itself,
the inchoate that, through words, can become who it already is,
below and beyond conscious thought and feeling,
or maybe it can become even more, or even different,
for, until it manifests full in our world,
it lives more in hint than in the specifics of actual form,
that form it finds when the oracle of my poetry
finds words to express the leading, true.

by Henry Walker
February 27, 2010

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