Monday 10 December 2007

Resonant Words

Jonathon, your poem Male Seeks has more for me with each new reading. It speaks to me in my unheard daughter self and it cries out to me in my can't bare to hear mother self. I would love to see it performed by two people, maybe at the open-mic in May.
I am a great believer in listening for the signs of the Cosmos and after reading your poem for the third time I decided to dip into a book of poetry as I let your words penetrate and the book just opened at a poem I have never read before called

MY MOTHER WOULD BE A FALCONRESS by Robert Duncan

My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
where I dream in my little hood with many bells
jangling when I'd turn my head.

My mother would be a falconress,
and she sends me as far as her will goes.
She lets me ride to the end of her curb
where I fall back in anguish.
I dread that she will cast me away,
for I fall, I mis-take, I fail in her mission.

She would bring down the little birds.
And I would bring down the little birds.
When will she let me bring down the little birds,
pierced from their flight with their necks broken,
their heads like flowers limp from the stem?

I tread my mother's wrist and would draw blood.
Behind the little hood my eyes are hooded.
I have gone back into my hooded silence,
talking to myself and dropping off to sleep.

For she has muffled my dreams in the hood she has made me,
sewn round with bells, jangling when I move.
She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist.
She uses a barb that brings me to cower.

These are only the first five verses, there are ten more, if you are interested I will type the whole thing and email it to you. I have a scanner sitting on my desk beside me but have not yet learnt how to use it, my husband has tried to teach me but I guess I am not yet ready to learn because I can't remember a word he told me. I have come to a time in my life where memory is a sometimes thing.

I look forward to getting to know you better and reading more of your resonant words. Safe journey along the road you are about to travel.

Tricia

1 comment:

jonathon lee said...

thankyou Trish,
It means a lot that you got something, was worried it was too cryptic & unpolished, cld be bleak or witty.
Wld love whole Falconress piece some day.
how about a response from the "unheard Daughter's voice you speak of??
Thematicaly linked or directly?
Forgive my memory I met so many that day, did we talk of the need to express?Re recent life events/?