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[wiselilraccoon]

April in Myth

April is old like water, prehistoric, recycled. Womb and bladder.
To my Third World parched skin, she’s America, running the tap.
And now, in a foreign hottub, she mothers me, as if she
has it to spare. Water and muscles, air and my salty grief.

April has bloomed before, on schedule, sometimes an early surprise.
She has chased and she’s been cupped to the lips, been drunk in,
and done someone’s share of drinking.  Me, too, always in August.

On April’s flesh, tears and kisses evaporate, leaving shine.
On mine, brine, crusty, leaving in cakes like the ice shelf.
I watch it go, with foreboding that natural disasters will result.

But water and her children won’t be possessed. In time,
she does the possessing, pooling foolish souls like shrimp,
pulling us through hurricanes and extinction and silence from space.

Mammoths, raccoons, wrens and Americans.

Like water, April is old, knows how to crest and trough, be a beating
organ of the beast, a good germ on the living planet.
Some herons are like pterodactyls pulled by hunger too far from shore.
There are fools and there are fish. Drink,  says April.
Extinction breeds myth. And oh, what a magnetic myth we make.

--Wren Tuatha

http://wiselittleraccoon.gaia.com/

[doreen peri]

i enjoyed this!... make no mythtake about it ... 

[Terri]

There isn't an off line in this; every word hits the mark.  I am consistently impressed by your work, WT, every one I've read I've saved.

[saw]

mysterious and beautiful...like the earth itself ...nice read

[constantine]

well done.

[constantine]

perhaps i was not emphatic enough; this is strong work. a superior effort. extinction breeds myth - powerful.

[wiselilraccoon]

Thanks, everyone! Someone else picked up on my description of this poem as "thick," and said it has too much, in the first stanza especially. Any thoughts?

[constantine]

it is, perhaps, a little dense. maybe beginning with a distilled couplet based on the first verse - like the intro to an essay - a thesis statement. easier said than done, but do-able. i think that if there is a problem, it resides in the first stanza. the flow is not as smooth as the stanzas that follow.

[wiselilraccoon]

Thanks. I'll have to poke at it when I get a chance.

[MikeMonroe]

The imagery is amazing in this one.  I loved being brought in to the character seen through your eyes.  This has a joy of life in spite of itself infused through the imagery and metaphors.

[theirishsea]

This is interesting. Some poems put into words what you have thought and felt but hven't expressed. Other poems, like this, bring entirely new insights and viewpoints. Womb and bladder start the poem veering into surprising directions.


This is a startling juxtaposition of the usual sense:

She has chased and she’s been cupped to the lips, been drunk in

"chased" calls to mind a drink as a chaser, and perhaps in the more common sense been pursued as pursued to the lips. Complicated syntax and denotations but successful. Highly original as far as I know.

The one thing of prime importance is the title. The subject of the poem is not just the physical realitis of nature but the incorporation of them, the transformation of them as myth.

I don't possess all the nuances and references in this poem. It demands to be read more than once. Maybe next week or the week after something else in it will stand out for contemplation.

One disturbing side note:

To my Third World parched skin, she’s America, running the tap.

I'm risking taking this out of context----in fact the poem has intriguing complexities----but "America" as the villain, as the controller is disturbing. What and who is "America"? Are we, the residents of the U.S., America? Do we look in the mirror everyday and see a pampered criminal that thinks he/she owns the world's resources and can do whatever he/she wants?

I think that concern about America is  present in the poem but many other nuances are there as well.

This is a thought-provoking poem.

[wiselilraccoon]

Thank you for drinking it in with such thirst!