This was not true during our last Spring Break trip with the intrepid "Dad and Mad"--Granddad Damian and Mamie Madeleine, who ordinarily are to be found in Lille, France, but who will throw in with any agenda we propose. Last time we visited the Grand Canyon, and from that journey arose many promising drafts, such as this one, which I will count and then follow with another infinity poem.
April 9
[poem]
********************************
April 10
(My brief research seems to corroborate this guess, and no, this formulation of the poem is not for young readers, but let’s let that go as a first draft.)
April 10
2 reaches down
out of
an open window—
“one
hand at the end of an arm
grasping
another hand”
is what
I wanted to write,
telling
a story of clasped
human
hands, a cliffhanger
story of
two tangoing in thin air—
but
looking now very carefully,
I
notice that 2
does not
in any obvious way
resemble
“two”.
Perhaps
2 was originally more like
Z, a connected pair of horizontal
lines,
and for
speed in writing became curved
because
after all
we do
probably need 2 more often
than Z.
© HM
2017
Brahmi numerals (lower row) in India in the 1st
century AD
(My brief research seems to corroborate this guess, and no, this formulation of the poem is not for young readers, but let’s let that go as a first draft.)
*********************************
April 11
they call it Horseshoe Falls
and try
to count the amount
of
water that passes here:
six
million cubic feet per minute.
what does
that even mean?
but I just
want to wear
this
wrap of water
this
pounding cape of pour
this cloak
of furious flow
I want
to wear this glinting infinity
this neverending
Niagara
of
water
©HM
2017
It's now 8 am, so I'll post my link and keep updating all day, in case anyone wants to follow the progress of my progressive catch-up today. The roundup on this very Good Friday indeed is with Doraine Bennett at Dori Reads. And speaking of progress, the Progressive Poem is on receives its line 14 today from Jan Godown Annino, and what a cracker it is, about-facing from Margaret Simon's line 13. The poem has taken on exciting extremes of temperature--slam!
**********************
April 12: a special poem in honor of said Granddad's birthday, yet to come...
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*******************************
April 14
Feeling Kinda Dumb
Plus means addition:
putting some in!
Minus means subtraction:
taking some out!
Plus jump ahead!
Minus jump back!
Plus: more and more!
Minus: less and less!
It all makes sense:
higher, then lower,
forward-back like a dance,
to the right to the right
totheright totheright totheright;
to the left to the left
totheleft totheleft totheleft.
It all makes perfect sense
until I have to "find the difference,"
find the difference between
4 and 13.
Um...the difference is
that this number is 4
and that one's 13.
And it's pretty obvious to those of us who are even a little observant that 4 has only one digit and 13 has 2 digits, and the digits are not even alike in any way, and also four has only one syllable and is spelled with four letters, which is cool because it means 4, while thirteen has two syllables and eight letters, which doesn't match up in the same way at all, so that's another difference, and also 4 is even because two people can each have a partner for the dance, while thirteen is odd because six people can have partners and one person is left out of the dance. So I can actually find quite a lot of differences between 4 and 13.
But none of them is 9.
©HM
2017
Done!
