From Prof. Jordan Smith
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples…
-RW Emerson
I want to start this one from scratch, the slight
Drag of my pen across the notebook’s length
Before I even know the words I’ll write
In that taut balance of texture and intent,
And as for subject, well, to take as found
What’s found, the common or the commonplace
Book’s all too familiar quotations, boundaries,
Like a map’s quadrants or a portrait traced
Through mullioned window panes, of what’s left out.
A few herbs and apples mumbles RWE.
The stuff that is course… adds Whitman. Then a shout
Rocks, trees wind… (a panicked HDT),
As if this partial list’s few parameters
Might underwrite such indiscriminate
Range-finding by an amateur
Who hopes for more in less, the infinite
In something almost accidentally saved:
A crow’s feather, haggard; a fungus, lipping
A bark scrap; lichen scars on birch, a gray
Skein of moss on a pine sprig. Slip
These into the notebook’s leaves… And yet
Itemization undoes syntax; the shells
Emerson took from the beach, bright and wet,
Apart from it were dead weight on his shelf,
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