For my New Year’s greeting this year I refer to this sonnet by my poetic alter ego, Freddie Omm:
For those unable to decipher the handwriting, here’s the text:
endings & beginnings
(in a winter’s garden)
*
BEGIN with the word that comes first, like light
from a twilit winter’s garden, when soft rainfalls
drop on dewy, leaf-pocked grass, showering bright
like a sudden flow of MOMENTS through the calls
of a goosequilled V tooting past, this starry night…
*
I sometimes try to freeze TIME, so it stops
and in an INSTANT feel and think all blend
and merge within MOMENTS—consciousness drops
like heaven’s rainfall in a winter garden—
inconsummate, unbegun, word without END,
*
but now SOMETIMES I forget such somethings,
and in your love I’ve found SEASONS to care
about the here, NOW, not some perfected place where
there are no more ENDINGS and BEGINNINGS.
*
freddie o
viersen, 29-31 december 2013
. . . . “there are no more endings and beginnings.” . . . .
That line has an ominous ring within the whole, its knell, suggesting a sinister eternity of effort and life and death mangled up together, a spiritual infinitude.
Your poem certainly does not appear to relish subsummation into that state, not one little bit. Even so, many yearn for it, you must realize, and they wish they could only participate in precisely that infinity of togetherness, that united consummation with the universal spirit:
. . . . inconsummate, unbegun, word without END. . . .
When we begin with the word that comes first, what word is it to be?
@Jonathan –
The Bible says the first word is “Let”, as in “Let there be light.”
In my poem here now it is “Begin”.
At birth, most babies do not speak comprehensible words, and when they start to speak, it is usually “Mama” or “Papa”.
While none of these was written or spoken with a view to answering your question, I do think them all grand candidates for First Word…
Thanks for sharing, Freddie. This is a beautiful time to share such a beautiful poem.
Thank you very much, Emmeline.
This is a powerful, unconventional sonnet. Thank you for sharing, I enjoyed it very much.
Stephen
@stephen – thank you very much!
A lovely, light, weighty, witty paean to vitality! Life in its seasonal motions. I love the virile flow of the rhythm splurging forward but then getting checked in places before resuming its onward flow!
That tooting, goosefilled V, wandering randomly over the celestial plane, half suggests to me a V-sign! What a load of cheeky geese!
Seasons in the present moment is a thought which had never before occurred to me. And now I think about it, it is of course true that each moment contains seasons upon seasons depending upon how you apprehend the moment in time.
A beautiful piece of poetry.
Warms my heart in this unprecedently cold and Arctic winter.
Thank you very much for those kind words, Nancy. The geese, yes, they are cheeky!