[John Riley]

Revision

A Plain, Unknowable

It wasn’t an owl that dropped from its roost
onto the shack’s tin roof undeterred by its bright heat
to watch the wordless dialogue of the people gathered.
One man with a woman’s hands on his hips, pulling him back
as he looked too steadily over the vast expanse,
deeper and wider than he had thought
could be found on this watery planet,
an expanse he knows will be the end for him,
that survival will mean becoming a crow
or a blood-thirsty hawk, teeth ravaged with blood
from the latest dead thing.


***


A Wall, Unscalable

It wasn’t an owl that dropped
from its roost
onto the shack’s tin roof
undeterred by its bright heat
to watch the wordless dialogue
of the people gathered.
One man with a woman’s hands
on his hips, pulling him back
as he looked too steadily
over the vast expanse,
deeper and wider than he had thought
could be found here
on this watery planet,
an expanse he knows
will be the end for him,
that survival will mean
becoming a crow
or a blood-thirsty hawk,
teeth ravaged with blood
from the latest dead thing,
only the base of first life
dragging itself deeper into a dark hole
to wait centuries to fly beneath
a sky’s consummation.

[annie nance]

Hi John,

I do have questions and stuff I'm still thinking about in regard to your poem, but what's really hanging me up here is the hawk with teeth.

annie

[Joe Crocker]

Hi John

Many things, as usual, that I don’t really understand on first pass, but enough moments to encourage me in. For example, I liked the enjambement in L7/8 “a man with a woman’s hands/on his hips. Unlike Annie. I thought the hawk’s teeth had a powerful surrealist feel to it. (But I can see that the teeth do not necessarily have to be read as belonging to the bird.)

I’m reading the poem as a bleak perspective on our future. The hot tin roof, the coming Armageddon, a barbarous survival of the meanest, and the only hope being that some small part of life can bury itself in a dark hole until, one distant day, it at all blows over.

I too have never felt more depressed about the way the world is going. And this poem captures that for me.

Joe

[John Riley]

I thought the hawk with teeth fit the theme well. I could be wrong. I think the question is would a hawk with teeth still be a hawk? I think it would be if it maintained all its other characteristics but will keep my mind open.

[Julie Steiner]

I assume that once again, what I'm getting out of the poem has nothing to do with your intentions, John, and that I'm about to make a fool of myself. But here goes:

I am struck by the comparisons/contrasts (beginning with the poem's telling us what the thing that landed on the roof was not), and also by the many references to time.

A hawk-sized flying animal with teeth did, indeed, exist, although not at the same time as humans. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterod...yniuk_wiki.png

It seems to me that the man in the poem could regard two great expanses of time—not only the one before him, but also the one behind him. The concept of eternity makes the dividing line between the two less significant, doesn't it? And if the conditions are right, evolution might perhaps return to a place it has been before, however unlikely that might be.

I hope some of these thoughts are helpful.

[John Boddie]

John -

The short lines make for choppy reading (L13-16 in particular), particularly with a subject that seems more of a tsunami than a waterfall.

JB

[Ella Shively]

Hi John,

I am in admiration of the images in this poem, but struggling to understand how they connect. The unscalable wall is particularly difficult for me. Is it tangible or metaphorical? Are the people standing on top of it, looking out "over the vast expanse," or is the wall itself the vast expanse? There are a lot of interesting things happening in this poem, but I don't understand what they mean, and some people are going to be more okay with that than others.

I love the bird imagery near the end. Rereading, it does bother me that the hawk has teeth (unless it's a mythical hawk), but I think "beak ravaged with blood" (or other gnarly bits like gristle, marrow, entrails, etc) would sound just as cool.

Thanks for sharing,

Ella

[Michael Cantor]

The poem captured me for almost all of its length, but I lost it on the last four lines, which set off my trying too hard alarm. I suggest either ending it on the latest dead thing; or being a little less poetic and a little more clear on the closing quartet.

[John Riley]

Thanks for all the help. I've used most of it to revise. I was most hesitant about the line length but now I think I may like this better. I have been writing poems lately that look more like this on the page and was partly motivated to mix it up but that's probably silly. I'll still have to think.

I'm going to keep the raven's teeth for now. It is about a loop and as Julie pointed out there was once a raven with teeth. I know it's a little startling but that is what I like about it. But everything has the potential for change. (I mean everything about the poem.)