First Poem to Ivy

Heartbeats linger
at curb's edge
as sunrise walks

then it's the day
the sun a flickering exit sign
leaning against suburban streets

and the day is flat,
immobile as
a lizard on afternoon stone

at last we rejoin
soft & tender as mist
at dormer windows

---

You may recall that final stanza from an entry I posted a little over a week ago.

As I mentioned then, Ivy (in Cardiff, Wales, UK) has agreed to let me join the "Poem Postcard a week" discipline for the remainder of October. Though nothing has been said about sharing these cards with the internet world, I felt it appropriate not to share these poems until Ivy had a chance to read them.

Ivy has posted a comment below to note that she has received my first card. I received my first card from her on Monday or Tuesday of this week. Her card has some neat images — both in the text, and on the card.

I mailed her a card last Thursday (actually a day early); I'm working on a poem to send this Friday. Oh, yeah — tomorrow. Technically, that would be the end of the thing. But I've got one more stamp, and I've actually gotten some Oklahoma tourist postcards to share with her. So she'll receive at least one more card.

Reading this poem with a little over a week's distance, it seems to me it may suffer from some of my typical excesses. For one thing, there's no title; I've become exceedingly lazy about titles. In submitting work to Poetry Bay, I've had to give the poem a title. In this case, I guess I'd use the first line as a title.

I'm also lazy about punctuation. In this example, there's just that lonely comma in the third stanza. My stanzas tend to be "sense units", especially when I'm doing these postcard poems. Each stanza is roughly equivalent to a sentence; each line is roughly equivalent to how I hear the thing in my head. I'm not consistent about this, which surprises me not the least.

Lately, I've been a little more interested in arresting images than I am in rhythm and structure. Here, the third stanza again stands out, though I suspect it's not original.

Now, why don't I fix these perceived shortcomings before sharing the poem with the world? Well, simple laziness is a big factor here. I'm also as interested in the process as I am the final product (one reason I like to peak in on Mike Snider's Draft House on occasion).

Additionally, a great deal of the time I seem to be writing for an audience of one — myself. Once I've communicated whatever I need to hear, the thing seems done. Would it be better if I honed it, so it would speak to you as well?

Of course, I have no idea of knowing whether this poem — if we may call it that — speaks to you. If it does, that's marvelous. If it doesn't, perhaps the next poem will.