My mother walks
ahead of me--
I walk behind,
Indian file.
She points things out:
the pinkish buds
of the bay laurel,
the stones
worn smooth and flat,
the place
a deer has left
the half-moons
of its track.
Her fingers push
dry leaves away,
and fiddleheads appear
She cuts
the little fists
above their roots.
These
we will carry home
and the violet leaves
and the cress
and the wild asparagus.
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Con Chapman
Deven McKay
Dave Rickert
OEsheepdog
Gerri Luce
Bellwether Vance
Salon.com
Comments
Now If I can garner a teaching moment from you?
In a comment above you said "the form and the content are related". So would it be the "Indian file" you are talking about with your word form coming out in a line (or file?) Would this be like the form of doing a poem about a circle in the shape of a circle?
The appearance on the page is certainly "single file," but I'm not convinced that so-called concrete poems, or poems that have a certain shape on the page, really get much beyond the typographical gimmick.
When this poem is read aloud, I also mean for the line breaks to suggest walking, one foot in front of the other--and if I'm lucky, it might occur to the reader that the speaker is learning the same way, one thing after another.
r
Even beauty has a sharp edge.