Thursday, January 30, 2025

threading the threads

my mind is a puddle of fluff & fuss

my hands are busy clocks & cords


you tell me, it is not complicated-

it is either this way or that way


this way is to walk with the cat

or that way is go inside the room and wear 


tall crown I made, a Queen's golden crown

or a joker's cone cap


and if I choose a joker's cone cap,

is it going to make me laugh to oblivion


because I know my indecision of things

can really get in the way - see the empty 


table?   you tell me - easy,

walk with the cat, as if it is 


really a quiet walk on the path, out  

out of this churning madness of choices


in my head, a nest of noisy birds

waiting for mother's treat & ultimate goal-


freedom

[walking out & away with the cat]


in my dreamscape, I am a white horse 

bolting out of the frame, towards the moon


but my feet are rooted in threads, deep in silos-

where and when (things past)



Gertrude Abercrombie:  Where or When (Things Past), 1948, Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art

Posted for dVerse Poets Pub - OpenLinkNight - Join us when the pub doors open at 3pm EST.

20 comments:

  1. Oh... this is wonderful, we live in a web of choices all the time. Love the entanglement you found in the picture. I look forward to the session tonight.

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  2. I hear her earnest plea in the surreality...

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  3. What a fun ekphrastic poem, Grace, from the first to last line. I love the pace, the conversational tone, and especially the lines:
    ‘in my dreamscape, I am a white horse
    bolting out of the frame, towards the moon’.

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  4. What to do, what to do? Awake its either/or and dreaming its pour me some more ... Fun poem Grace, waltzing on its high wire.

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  5. "you tell me - easy,
    walk with the cat, as if it is
    really a quiet walk on the path, out
    out of this churning madness of choices"

    Poignant write

    Much♡love


    Poignsnt

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  6. I enjoyed your interpretation of this enigmatic artwork...making such choices can be more complicated than it appears

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  7. in my dreamscape, I am a white horse

    bolting out of the frame, towards the moon

    Oh yeah, that's the line that activated my dormant girls and horses gene. Now I want to be an equestrian astronaut when I grow up. (No word on when that might be.)

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  8. My mind feels like a puddle when I'm in indecision! I want to be that horse!

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  9. Wonderful use of the imagination to create this poem. I would def be the white horse in a dreamscape.

    in my dreamscape, I am a white horse
    bolting out of the frame, towards the moon

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  10. Your poem really captured indecisiveness!

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  11. This is a delightful poem, and I think the artist would have loved it as a companion piece for her painting. Bravo!

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  12. an incredible ekphrastic Grace - every brush stroke accounted for in lyricism

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  13. I love how you look at the picture, Grace. Its quirky yet relatable.

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  14. This is an interesting poem, Grace. Life is full of choices and they all have consequences. I enjoyed your take on the painting. Robbie Cheadle

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  15. A wonderful response to the painting, Grace. I love the way the narrator looks at choices. The closing lines are perfect!

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  16. Whether strung out or strung in, we are tethered to the world and our "feet" "rooted to the threads," even in the surreal world.

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