Sunday, September 10, 2006

Rewriting a messy poem

I've decided that last poem posted on the blog is messy. The redraft is not too pretty either - several attempts at a the closing fifth strophe have turned into glyph-vomits. So I've decided to cut it completely. I'm not sure the fourth strophe offers up enough of a close, but I'm tired: I can always rework the poem again if it doesn't cut the horseradish.

First night

It was your eyes that sobered me: ice
at the end of the world, the ghost of a fox
staring down his hare across the tundra,

a chilled air vaulting through the sweat
of men as they drank, posed, assessed. That glance
of shivered blue left me feral. I was in the bar

and then I was in the bar with you. When
you passed me lager I spied iceflakes glint
on your dew claw. We danced, I think

we danced, or possibly you stalked my tracks
through the snows of our private ecology;
new ground frozen from the polar seas.

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