On the Path

You and I will turn aside
as if on our way to a feast,
turn inside out like a burst bubble,
miss the feast—lie down on the shady path

as if we were lost children:
two lost children who could not find
our way to the party, the event,
the wonderful feast on the shady path

where we have instead lain down,
no prince or princess who will come
to rescue us with pigeons, potter’s
glue and candlewax—no thin stepmother

with a shady midlife hex
to snare us while we sleep away
our Saturnalia. No spells, no feast.
We’re hexless on the path, alone, asleep.

Artist’s Statement

I wrote On the Path two years ago in response to a challenge in quantitative syllabics which involved writing four quatrains, each quatrain being composed of lines in ascending syllabic values. The four lines of each stanza were to contain seven, eight, nine, and ten syllables, respectively. Ordinarily, I do not write comfortably in syllabics. In this particular poem, however, the subject matter seemed to establish itself as a kind of metaphor for the challenges of the form itself, the people in the poem struggling to stay on an arbitrary path in order to get to a feast which they were destined never to reach.

In constructing this poem, I learned a good deal about the exigencies of the syllabic line—how to move into a place where I could work not only with the form, but against it, as well. My long-range goal is to utilize formal elements in such a way that the form not only shapes the content of the poem, but the content defines the form. While I was not entirely successful in accomplishing these goals in On the Path, it remains a milestone poem for me. Working through the technicals of this particular piece has helped me to clarify and refocus my overall approach to writing in structured forms.