I finished Dumuzi this morning. There are tweaks to come, but he’s ready to start going out, muddy face sheepish grin and all.
The first poem in the book is
At Leaf
A son of my
first mind, was
at leaf, wind on
raw skin, fist
of one thirst
upthrust.
Roars
snowmelt where
hemlocks over-
hanging shiver
motherlove.
Sur-
round of what
no one had
made, made
of what no
surround
had.
The title poem is
Dumuzi
Let no state be
enemy. Wet, dry, agon.
Work an inmost first
flower mutedly.
Wind blows light about
the life (hemlocks) from
which art is not apart
nor of a part. What a
rock thought to do
was rain and it
rained.
Deer come
out of th
hill.
The oldest lines date back to Nov. 1999. A conversation I mis-overheard on the M.V. Quinsam, a ferry plying the route from Gabriola, an island pinched between Vancouver Island and the BC mainland, where I lived in a summer cottage in the off-season
—they thought they had it all but they didn’t
—oh, once you have that you don’t get rid of it
—Monday she goes, an ontologist,
that’s the specialist
The newest lines date back to last night. An uptight but not incorrect galla reminds Inanna of the terms of her release from the underworld.
The last poem in the book is elegy.
And the image atop is Tammuz by Ardon Mordecai. Sent me years ago by fellow poet and University of Utah alum Timothy O’Keefe. Thank you Tim. I aspire to it as a cover.
And now it’s time to start catching up on what seem years, though are just days, of dishes, laundry, bills. Oh and I believe I have two new courses to teach starting Tuesday. (Really I’m about to start compiling a list of contest deadlines and open reading periods . . . ) Thanks, all, for the kindness of your words, those who have sent some, or of your attending upon these words, which somehow I have felt you doing, I have, and it sustains me, it does.
the art of compost 