pebbles

[amuse]

possibly pebbles
remember
nothing remember
time before it began,
and the yugas before
even matter existed

when they were untold
quantities of gas

before they became mountains
where dinosaurs
mated thrashing their tails
trying to escape
inevitable doom
when meteors
displaced them
and turned them
into sanctuaries for
people to pray
to explore
get lost
in before
their caverns
subsided into oceans
or thrust up
from still waters
like newborn babies
peering around
them at 360 degrees of water,
newly wrought
yet capable of sustaining
life.

perhaps pebbles
remember where they
came from where
they are going
why they were transformed
into marbles
why they will become sand
and disappear in some
beachgoer's teeth
one day after
a summer
barbecue
i wonder what
they could teach me
if i could even
comprehend.


...your son informed me
the other day that
i'm his son
"phoned" his "girlfriend"
"Are you on the planet?
Are you coming to pick me up?"
already he knows more
than i ever have,
remembers more than
i ever will,

and i would ask him
about the
secret of pebbles
but he's aging fast
and like them
his silence is building.

[mono]

Oh my goodness!
I noticed that you had not posted poetry in a while, amuse, but, truly, that wait brought a masterpiece! I have always noticed your signature --

shh!!!
the air and water have been here a long time, and they are telling stories.
-- and this poem's first four stanzas seem to reflect this interesting thought (oddly, while walking through a forest in a nearby park today, called Macleay Park, I happened to have a similar thought regarding the age of the large Douglas Fir trees, a small stream, and some boulders, and the stories they could "tell" :D).
Pebbles, you state correctly, in their many collective and broken-down forms (sand, rocks, stones, boulders, mountains, canyons, meteors, etc.), have obviously lasted over the centuries and millenia (ad infinitum - ?), and that they rest in this position, at this moment, one cannot but wonder where else it has rested, and at one moment. As a side note, strangely, in my walk earlier today, I found a lava rock when I wandered slightly off trail - where it came from, I have no clear idea, but perhaps from when St. Helens erupted in 1980. Just like in an old house, one muses "if these walls could speak" - think of "if these pebbles, trees, and streams could speak!"
The last two stanzas seemed really unexpected (yet not random), and, I say without embarrassment, took my breath away as my eyes filled with tears. The mortality, yet irreplacable wisdom, of experience and youth will, unfortunately, never compare to the near immortality of inhuman nature. To say the least, this one proves as a true gem! ;)

*edit*
I learned a new word!

Yuga: n. Hinduism One of the four ages constituting a cycle of history.
source (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=yuga)

[white camellia]

I adore your thoughts, such deep ones that are full of vigor and sentiment, revealing the passion toward life, and your words like submissive cat crawling on your laps, in her dreams... :)

[blp]

Hmm, well, a counterview. I really like most of your poems, Amuse, but this one, beautifully written as it is, doesn't work for me as well - it's very much a matter of taste - the nature mysticism is not to mine and it feels pushed too hard, a little laboured and didactic. Much happier when you get into beachgoers' teeth (a lovely phrase), summer barbecues and then this vaguely, chaotically alluded to personal matter, which is all superb and not helped much in my opinion by thinking about rocks. However, if you haven't already, you might like to see my very favourite film of all time 'Weekend' by Jean Luc Godard, in which a character said to be Emily Bronte (if I remember rightly), but seeming very like Alice in Wonderland, delivers a similar paean to a pebble.

[Admin]

You know if you post your poem at The Poetry Post you can just link to it here like so:

http://www.online-poetry.com/poem/152

[amuse]

mono, thank you! i wish i could have seen your walk, oops i mean rock, and yes, that i'd also seen your walk. oregon is one of the greenest places i've ever seen, and what a treat to have a park like that close to town...sigh. J-- is a very inspiring child. i often wonder where he came from.


white camellia, what a kind metaphor! can you hear me purr? :D


blp, thank you! i watch very few films and love recommendations. and this one sounds foreign? :) i prefer those to american films.

i see what you mean...all i had when i woke up the next day was "possibly pebbles" and should've written down the poem on saturday night when it was fresh. i'm not sure what it was now (though definitely gas -> matter & untold historicity sort of things). the stuff from the little one has presented itself at least twice now out of nowhere, isn't that interesting.

i mostly don't like the rhythm, it "hears" longer (when i wrote it) than it reads, so i see where you find it laboured - thank you, thank you for commenting.

[blp]

re the film, yup, French.

[blp]

Just to clarify, I didn't find the poetry of this forced, just the concept. It reads really well. I agree that there's something great about that initial thought - gas > stone - but I didn't feel you'd yet found anything to really say about it beyond obvious and large generalisations that, even in aspiring to a sort of sublime, seem banal to me.

Coinicidentally, just been reading some of Lorine Neidecker's late work, which is thoroughly suffused with geology.

[amuse]

mm. it would help if i concentrated on writing as a craft, wouldn't it, rather than generally spewing out whatever....did rewriting and all that. (Oops :blush:)

thank you, and for the clarification.

that's neat; i've never heard of him/her...googles...oh, neat. :) here are some links (http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/niedecker/) for whomever's interested (http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/niedecker/lake.html); Thanks, i love people turning me on to new poets. have you heard of Koa's poet - Anna Akhmatova (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2400)?

[blp]

Well I'm interested. Re: rewriting, from one of those Neidecker poems:

What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

Well it shows - in the best possible way. Thanks for that link, Amuse. Your googling on her went better than mine. I hadn't seen the earlier work before and I'm amazed by it. Some of it, something about its anecdotal qualities, reminds me of yours quite a lot.

Have heard of AA, yes, and seen a little and definitely intend to read more. What do you mean 'Koa's poet'? Is Koa someone on the forum?

[Isagel]

I imagine this poem like a movie in my mind, like the scenes from 2001 ( or was it 2010? I do not remember) a panorama from the beginning to the present. I like it very much. You lost me abit at
"..your son informed me
the other day that
i'm his son
"phoned" his "girlfriend"
"Are you on the planet?
Are you coming to pick me up?" "

but just when I thought I was not understanding anything you managed to wrap it up in the last lines. Still the quoted phrase confused me. I do not know if it was an effect you wanted to create or not.

( still as always you know you had me at "possibly pebbles" - I am a sucker for alliteration. Gets me evrytime :-) )