Marine Surface, Low Overcast

 

 

Marine Surface, Low Overcast 

 

Out of churned aureoles

this buttermilk, this

herringbone of albatross,

floss of mercury,

deshabille of spun

aluminum, furred with a veloute

of looking-glass,

 

a stuff so single

it might almost be lifted,

folded over, crawled underneath

or slid between, as nakedness-

caressing sheets, or donned

and worn, the train-borne

trapping of an unrepeatable

occasion,

 

this wind-silver

rumpling as of oatfields,

a suede of meadow,

a nub, a nap, a mane of lustre

lithe as the slide

of muscle in its

sheath of skin,

 

laminae of living tissue,

mysteries of flex,

affinities of texture,

subtleties of touch, of pressure

and release, the suppleness

of long and intimate

association,

 

new synchronies of fingertip,

of breath, of sequence,

entities that still can rouse,

can stir or solder,

whip to a froth, or force

to march in strictly

hierarchical formation

 

down galleries of sheen, of flux,

cathedral domes that seem to hover

overturned and shaken like a basin

to the noise of voices,

from a rustle to the jostle

of such rush-hour

conglomerations

 

no loom, no spinneret, no forge, no factor,

no process whatsoever, patent

applied or not applied for,

no five-year formula, no fabric

for which pure imagining,

except thus prompted,

can invent the equal.

 

Amy Clampitt 

 

When it comes to description - if there were a Hall of Fame - Amy Clampitt 

would deserve a place there. 

 

"floss of mercury" 

"deshabille of spun aluminum" 

"down galleries of sheen"...

 

  

Can these descriptions ever be equaled? 

 

 

 

 

Fog

 

 

Dale Lockwood

 

Fog

          A vagueness comes over everything,

as though proving color and contour

alike dispensible: the lighthouse

extinct, the islands' spruce-tips

drunk up like milk in the

universal emulsion; houses

reverting into the lost 

and forgotten; granite

subsumed, a rumor

in a mumble of ocean. 

                                         Tactile

definition, however, has not been

totally banished: hanging 

tassel by tassel, panicled

foxtail and needlegrass,

dropseed, furred hawkweed,

and last season's rose-hips

are vested in silenced

chimes of the finest,

clearest sea-crystal.

                                      Opacity

opens up rooms, a showcase

for the hueless moonflower

corolla, as Georgia

O'Keefe might have seen it,

of foghorns; the nodding

campanula of bell buoys;

the ticking, linear

filigree of bird voices.

 

Amy Clampitt

 

So many times the only response to a poem I can make 

is to be quiet and read it over again.

 

Clampitt is masterful at description -

 I have nothing to say that adds to her work.

She has done it all so beautifully that I see and recognize

each detail.

 

She makes it sound obvious, simple.

It is anything but.

 

 

(last post)

         

Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe

Shorebird-Watching

For S.

 
To more than give names
to these random arrivals--
teeterings and dawdlings
of dunlin and turnstone,
black-bellied or golden
plover, all bound for

what may be construed as
a kind of avian Althing,
out on the Thingstead,

the unroofed synagogue
of the tundra--is already
to have begun to go wrong.

What calculus, what
tuning, what unparsed
telemetry within the
retina, what oversdrive
of hunger for the nightlong
daylight of the arctic,

are we voyeurs of? Our
bearings gone, we fumble
a welter of appearance,
of seasonal plumages
that go dim in winter:
these bright backs'

tweeded saffron, dark
underparts the relic
of what sibylline
descents, what harrowings?
Idiot savants, we've
brought into focus

But Adam, drawn toward
that dark underside,
its mesmerizing
circumstantial thumbprint,
would already have
been aware of this.

 

 

Amy Clampitt 

 

It's not just the question of what the birds think (last post), but how can we think of the birds? The sheer numbers of them! The kinds - "dunlin and turnstone, black-bellied or golden plover", the bewildering migrations- "all bound for what may be construed as a kind of avian Allthing", and gatherings - "out on the Thingstead, the unroofed synagogue of the tundra". What are all these? What pattern are we witness to? What instinct? What marvels are these indicative of?

No one has expressed this consternation quite like Amy Clampitt.