Sunday, November 30, 2008

No Ambition For Dry Pivot


The white man says walk.
The red hand says stop.
We square step with a broom
and two dance with a mop.

I miss my friends; 
the stand up bass
and upright piano
but 
when they play 
I'll listen and follow.

Inside the basement wood joist ribs
of the old century leviathan 
sounding deep under waves of memory
I finally understand.

The headlights in the rain
are flashlights searching for meaning
in place and time.

I however have no destination.

I'm up here,
north of the oil tar skeleton
of the coal Gas Works,
west of the wayward girl-ghosts
of Good Shepherd Center,
yards from the fifty foot explosion
of big leaf maple
and the nicotine stained windows
of the doll-maker's house.
You can find me
with a needle and lodestone,
no ambition for dry pivot
staring at magnetic north.

3 comments:

heather said...

This is really pretty.

Like measuring your life out with coffee spoons.

ScaughtFive said...

Thanks! I like that coffee spoon thing.

heather said...

Of course! And, just to make sure you know that I didn't come up with the coffee spoon line, here's the original stanza. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock be one of my favorites all right.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?