Saturday, August 01, 2009

poem

The mouth opens black
under an inaccessible sky.
You look at the mouth,
black and open like that,
no way into it.
You're considering the ways
you might get away from it.
There’s left
and right
and back the way you came.
You could walk under it, too,
duck right under its big black gape,
those two broad teeth poised to bite,
one tooth to each stiff jaw.
You could stop,
and with an open palm,
whack that mouth -
whang!
Then on into the unfenced field,
leave the road stopped before the mouth
that’s going to bite, looks like,
going to bite a piece off and swallow it.
You’d be brave,
marching down the throat of that future,
past where any road’s allowed.





photo by Art Durkee
found on blog post by Jim Murdoch
in which he talks about writing poems in response to artwork

6 comments:

Jim Murdoch said...

Excellent response, Glenn. Now that is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for. Yes, I suppose the arrows do look like a mouth. I never saw that. Yes. Very good indeed.

Glenn Ingersoll said...

I didn't realize the "field" beyond the signpost was actually a Lake!

Jim Murdoch said...

Me neither. That's the problem with black and white photography. Now I know, of course I can see it.

David Lee Ingersoll said...

Beware the appetites of road signs.

Anonymous said...

Hi, Glenn. Nice poem! How are things?

Jack Martin

Glenn Ingersoll said...

Things pretty good here. Rehabbing our kitchen - our contractor keeps adding on stuff, like a new heating system, earthquake retrofit. It's going well, I think. But can be stressful.

Nothing much new in poetry.

I see Lauren's books frequently; she's tapping the keyboard!