New Twist

So I've been sick this past weekend, which is why I didn't get a poem up yesterday... supposedly. But anyways my last poetry assignment in my class was to write a section poem, which I decided to do on the nature of Norway. You will see that these poems are familiar: these were part of my summer project, and I reinterpreted them to create new poems. This was actually really interesting. It was fun to see things redrawn this way. Anyways, yup. I've included the original poem and then the redraw.


7/3

Water blends too well with things,
As if it were all on single strings.
A certain place finds my eyes,
Not to be described as one noun.
They clouds are gray, this place like ashes.

And so I watch it, and I
Am positive that this is the sky.
But a little boy splashes,
And then I realize
I’ve been looking down.


Water Blends Too Well with Things

In its aquamarine interpretation of trees
And people. The softness, serenity of fluid outlines,
The impertinence of detail.
Because they way one moves is often—
More important? No— more conspicuous.
Only the clouds look the same, but that may be because of their
Movement. They float under the lilies like gentle fish.
The breeze sighs among the rocks and some tumble in casually,
The pond catching its breath once they all finally sink.
My face never had so much movement.

7/8

The duck swam.

Its feet made waves
In a perforated triangle.

And the duck spoke: “I am
A master now. My choice saves
This certain grass from being eaten.

“But oh, I am so far from the highest view.
The danger I feel! Often I think a wolf will mangle
Me by my neck. But, even then, a wolf can be beaten.
By you.”



To a Duck:

Why are you so fragile? Your shivers ripple through
Your glass skeleton. I expect you to shatter, your hollow bones
Whistling like a bent oboe among the reeds.
You assert yourself as if you were an unorthodox question,
Incredible shame for an innocent inquisition,
Grinding out of an indecisive mouth.
I can imagine many more ways for you to die
Than for you to live,
Though I suppose if you weren’t so brittle,
I wouldn’t find you so beautiful.

7/22

rolling quiet
just static of
shock a scream
couldnt pass through
the air is too brittle

no birds
but ashes
no weeping rain
but smoke hangs
too bleak for rain or birds

7/23

Save me, trees! I cry.
You are more fortunate than I!

How you stand, foreboding
In endless array. How you stand
Forever, keeping hold of the land.
How you stand unafraid in the dark.
Never telling if you are imploding.
Never telling save your bark.

I’ve hated you for having no soul.

But you sure have this all under control.



The Forests in Hallingdal, Vestlandet, Norway

Every glass building in Regjeringsstrøket
Has more of itself on the street
Than in its iron framework.
These trees are older than the government.
Never has Oslo been so lit with flowers and prayer candles, but
Flora grows back every spring, after the forest fires, of course.
A bullet to the head can instantly kill a fifteen-year-old boy.
It takes at least twenty axe swings to fell an oak.
We make cemeteries out of people.
We make churches out of trees.


7/27

The dark could but converge.
It hung at a fixed point,
Incorrigible to urge.

How stubborn was it one
Evening. The clouds floated
On the darkest cusp, a joint
That was quickly demoted.

For the days are shorter.
And as for the sun,
I’m not sure if we can afford her.


A Month’s Aging of the Midnight Sun

There used to be an eternal day, the sun bowing to a point
Then escaping the darkness, swimming back upstream
Into the sky. I suppose it was perseverance.
But the summer aged.
The air is damp from too much movement,
From too much life doing too much too fast.
The sun limps behind the thick clouds,
Its light sallow compared to June.
She sleeps longer now, and sometimes she forgets to wake.
I have not seen her in three days.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre