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Web of Infinity
After our personal hurricanes
and all the inner banter
that sounds so true
in this borrowed life,
the world is still here
and in love
with itself,
and look, it has
presented me with the
sanctified spider—
a parable in the body
of nightmares,
and sizzling with the
joy of being
where it is in
gathering of the small
and the brief—
truly the most blessed—
and it catches more
than what can be seen
in those trickles of
liquid pearl:
the first dream catchers
of the Chippewa nation.
Wheel of satin death,
Emblem of forever:
take the last of my
buzzing doubt,
whose name is mortal,
snag all that pretends
to matter,
till finally,
I remember:
Our flame was lit
by a greater flame,
our star fell from an
endless sun,
all one boiling universe,
one collective seizure
of birth and death
and birth . . .
one web,
like the river with its
living glass
unwinding
into lakes and seas
and mists with
memories of past lives
reeling in
shattered blue . . .
Dear dancing net of
the ancients,
strands of silver knowing,
take the wild parts that
still believe in illusion,
take the particles of fear
posing as a universe,
take all of me
till I am
everything.
Patricia Joan Jones
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"...the world is stiill here/and in love/with itself," The ultimate summation. ~S~
Thank you for reading and
Thank you for reading and appreciating my work. It means so much.
I have never ready so moving
I have never ready so moving a spider poem in my entire reading life. You really drew every possible meaning from this metaphor while also including your cosmic vision in the strands of this poetic web. To my mind this would be a very difficult metaphor---that is, the spider and its web---to work with, and I would never have dared try it. But you post this and show us that, given the high efficiency of your talent, any poem is possible, and any metaphor can be deployed successfully. I am glad to see this poem posted, and I believe it is another one of the centerpieces of your collection. And I am certainly grateful for the acknowledgement. To have even the smallest part in the construction of this great verbal edifice is a tremendous privilege and honor. Thank you for posting it, and thank you for including me. And thanks for listening to my rambling about my grandparents' meadow.
J-Called
I did enjoy your description
I did enjoy your description of the meadow and the vibrant way you described details such as the web.
Your analysis is a thrilling, intelligent validation of everything I strove to accomplish, and it's an extreme pleasure to have such a talented poet read, I mean, really read, my work and perceive my vision fully.
My most humble and deepest gratitude.
Thank you for the reply. In
Thank you for the reply. In my opinion, this poem is a textbook example of how to manage an extended metaphor, and how to deploy every detail of it to serve the poem's overall effect. Had I read this poem forty years ago, I would have understood much more about poetry than I did at that time. I like how this poem places itself on an x-y axis, if I could borrow a metaphor from analytic geometry. On the horizontal axis is the web in the reality we know; on the vertical axis is the cosmic vision that gives the web, as metaphor, so much power. I think this poem has helped me uncover another clue to your greatness, and to the processes within your poems. You place your poems on both axes without bringing our attention to them, and that very subtle positioning allows the poem to achieve its effect. Or, if I may continue on, and use an astronomical metaphor, your poems, like stars, function as the result of two equal forces. For the stars, it is the gravitational pull inward and the convection of heat and force outward, and this keeps the star's body intact in equilibrium. Your poems also contain two equal forces---your earthly vision, which is the horizontal axis; and your cosmic vision which is the vertical axis. This is one of the keys to your poetry that I have been after since I realized, in February, how really great and refined your poetry is. And someday, some enterprising grad student is going to see this comment and write a dissertation about this process in your poetry. I am very sure of that!
J-Called
Likewise, your expansive and
Likewise, your expansive and celestial analysis combined with a down-to-earth, sincere appreciation makes this the most generous commentary I've ever received. I treasure it. Echoes of gratitude . . .