Poem: Precipitous

From the book Interplay: Finding the Keys to Creativity

In your poetry, you make great use of surreal imagery. Do you have a hard time getting your students to take similar “flights” in their work?

“They are not used to using imagination. Most have plenty of it, but they are embarrassed by it, so my job is to convince them it’s all about taking chances, risking making a fool of oneself and going for broke. Otherwise, why write?”

--Charles Simic, poet

Precipitous

Long before I intellectualized

the world into a

windstorm of rods and cones

I recall

standing in the rain

watching a slick of oil as it

snakes down the gutter like a

long, liquid cypress tree

Framing the surface to a

lunchbox-size lake,

I spot a single pockmark landing and

reverse the telescope

winding it back on a

kitestring to the clouds

where it balances in the vapor like an

English riding champion

waiting for gravity to deliver its

unassailable marching orders

Around the corner my gutterstream

breaks loose, a centrifugal fan

fingering the asphalt for flaws and seams

tracking south to an unseen ocean

I picture myself on a beach

six months later.

I spy my single drop on a

sea lion’s nose and exclaim,

“Friend! How are you?

You’re looking well.”

At what height did I stop

watching the rain?

Five-two? Four-foot-eight?

Short enough only today, only now

to set aside my junk mail

see a thing for a thing and

inventory the small dramas at my feet.

First published in Terrain.org