Failure.

Comments

1. Anonymous says

   February 27, 2010 at 11:40 am

   Leaf by Niggle. Read it.

   Reply
2. Peacock says

   February 27, 2010 at 11:42 am

   That versifying broke my brain. Just a little bit.

   Reply
3. JOB says

   February 28, 2010 at 9:18 pm

   Sorry to show up late for the party…

   Here's mine:

   Aspen

   I
   High up in sky-country of years ago,
   These flickering trees semaphored their green
   Into Colorado sky. They threw
   Their shivered branch work against each mountain
   To wake ghosts of pioneers and prospects.
   Where oxygen is thinner than hammered gold
   And landscape refines what blood’s beat expects –
   My feet ate a mile of it and I felt old.

   II
   Aspen is a place never to be reached –
   Its distance strains the eye to touch, possess.
   A place of ghosted bones, now piled and bleached
   As old shadows – but a place to profess
   Faith in earth, its fullness a bowl, an ark
   That holds a body’s unobtainable breadth;
   So limbs sculpt out inner skin, outer bark;
   So leaves shudder, cool, cooling, out of breath.

   III
   The aspen leaf is silhouette and echoes
   The parent it shapes in the chaos of clay.
   The shuffling winds tangle with the geckoes
   And autumn’s fallen colors. That last day
   In Aspen, I walked the rich, sad sunlight down
   And heard time’s potter’s wheel hiss with desire:
   The aspens grant us leave to see things barren
   Like sunset’s match heads catching us, catching fire.

   IV
   This Aspen… This place can stake a firm claim
   On easy hearts – its air flushes thin veins.
   The ghosts of place always work their own time
   In clay; here they parse out and form great planes
   And angles, rising through low banks of cloud.
   Their yielded catkins drop to burn, turn cold
   In soil, wait and ignite again a hillside,
   A green world shaken awake by dormant gold.
   -Summer ‘98; Summer ‘05

   Reply
4. Dorian Speed says

   March 1, 2010 at 12:25 pm

   This post inspired me to walk out in the backyard and try to photograph our own pleasant tree.

   Oh! Look what I did! Not even on purpose!

   Uh, anyway, but the tree doesn't have any leaves right now and it just didn't feel right, photographing her under these circumstances. She suffers enough abuse from the children who hack playfully at her roots.

   So…wait for it…I guess we will have to EXCHANGE PLEASANT TREES another time.

   Reply
5. Matthew Lickona says

   March 1, 2010 at 12:29 pm

   "A pun?"

   "No – a play on words."

   – Ridicule

   Awesome. I also like "Hack playfully at her roots."

   JOB,

   I like "My feet ate a mile of it."

   Reply
6. nutmeg says

   March 3, 2010 at 10:27 am

   JOB is SUCH a show-off.

   😛

   Nicely done.

   Reply