One Almost Might
Wouldn't you say,
Wouldn't you say: one day,
With a little more time or a little more patience, one might
Disentangle for separate, deliberate, slow delight
One of the moment's hundred strands, unfray
Beginnings from endings, this from that, survey
Say a square inch of the ground one stands on, touch
Part of oneself or a leaf or a sound (not clutch
Or cuff or bruise but touch with finger-tip, ear-
Tip, eyetip, creeping near yet not too near);
Might take up life and lay it on one's palm
And, encircling it in closeness, warmth and calm,
Let it lie still, then stir smooth-softly, and
Tendril by tendril unfold, there on one's hand . . .
One might examine eternity's cross-section
For a second, with slightly more patience, more time for reflection?
A. S. J. Tessimond, The Walls of Glass (1934). The poem looks relaxed and conversational, but note the rhymed couplets.
4 comments:
Beautiful poem. I didn't actually read it as rhymed couplets until you pointed that out. Don't know why. Thank you again for introducing me to a poet I'd never heard of.
A poem that seems more pertinant now than ever
and the wren seems to be doing just that as he surveys the inch of ground he stands on.
From My Easy Chair: as always, thanks for stopping by. I didn't pick up on the rhymes right away either -- the conversational style threw me off, I suppose. Tessimond tends to do that sort of thing. I'm pleased that you like the poem. Tessimond's Collected Poems was republished by Bloodaxe Books last year, so maybe you'll be able to track down a copy.
Ms. Whitmore: thank you for visiting and commenting again. Yes -- spring in particular seems an apt time of year for what Tessimond is getting at, I think.
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