A poem is a pebble

Let’s be blunt about it. Poetry is as common as stone. More blunt: a poem is like a pebble I pick up on a gravelly shore. I put it in my pocket and carry it away. Maybe I’ll remember the way the sky was reflected in the river – or maybe I’ll remember something else – when I pull it out again.

Words are the grains of sand on the edge of the water. This is to say that they are not all alike. Apparent similarity is simply one attribute we notice. The grains of sand are mostly just very small from our perspective.

Do not be carried away by the metaphor. It is there only to carry you along.

Words are like the grains of sand in their ubiquity; they are only countless given our limited time frame and patience.

But a poem, let’s say, is more like a pebble, a small rock, in the sense that it is substantial enough to fit into our perspective and our time frame.

Do not be carried away by the metaphor. The metaphor is there to carry you.

The rock I pick up has distinguished itself, in my eye - perhaps in my eye alone. Some characteristic, some trait, managed to catch my eye.

Forget, for now, why that would be so. I will try to not lose my place, so you must try to maintain focus on this gravelly surface which is made up of concepts masquerading as solids.

Not to be carried away by the metaphor, but still, you must let words carry the meaning.

In all this rubble, my point is that a poem is a collection of words – it is a human-crafted thing – that is distinguishable from other collections of words that in some way initially the caught the poet’s eye and has perhaps been later caught by a reader (or hearer). It should however be noted that all sorts of poems will catch my eyes – they might even be rubies or sapphires, let us say - but those are not what this writing is all about.

This collection of words is about the poetry that exists in the space of our ordinary perspective in the time in which we are alive. These are stones with everyday distinguishing features that can serve as reminders of a place where we were, at a moment in time when we were alive and aware of some meaning in that particular time and place. That is, we might note the moment when we were aware of our existence and it meant something to us.

This goes back and forth. At times we are subject and at times we are object. At times it is about the reality of things and at times it is about the reality of our selves. And so this is has become tangled and takes us somewhat farther away from what I am trying to say. But see it, touch it, and then leave it lying on the beach.

Let’s bring this into my own experience, for example. When I collect my thoughts and compose them into a poem, I am providing for myself a piece of something, a record of who I was and where I was and when I was.

It becomes something I can put into my pocket. And later I can take it out and look at it again and remember, or at least try to remember.

How do we live unique, meaningful lives within an ubiquitous reality? If I say that poetry is a particular nuance of the more general idea of meaning, then a poem is a pebble. It solidifies the poetry around us. The poem is particular. It is a thing and things are what we can hold on to.

When I walk to the river, that is to the Kaw, by the route I usually take or perhaps more circuitously, reality seems from my perspective to be ubiquitous: colors, textures, sounds and faces - and sand and water and light and wind. And in my mind I would like to make reality seem more discrete, to make portions of the blur that I see all around me somewhat distinctive and to ascribe meaning that will allow me to preserve the sensation of being alive in that place and at that time.

Perhaps, as they say, this is all too abstract for words, but words are what I have chosen to use.

Some of the words I have put together on other pages convey things that are harder, more edged, but this particular collection of words reminds me more of the edge of the sandy shore where the water is just below the level of my feet, and what is solid and fluid meet at a surface that holds my weight yet shifts with every step.

All you can do is let the metaphors carry you.

Of course, my intent is to walk in reality, but meaning is registered in memory.

A poem is a pebble.