Ed Roberson
 

A Low Bank of Cloud

But for a low bank of cloud,
   clear morning,    empty sky.

The bright band of light beneath its gray,
   I thought was open distance,    but it’s ice

that’s raised the lake above the lip of blue lake
   and spilled it further out than that horizon

along the sky
   and floods the clouds..



Seeing:    this
   says not to trust blue line as terminus. –

But it’s simply the meniscus
   a measure of how close

the eye can be    to filled
   with seeing    as with this you see it widen

horizon    like a graduated cylinder’s
   circumference, too, increased      in which the surface drops



the more seeing is added..
   I seem    to be emptying of time

the more time I put in,
   and see like a man with weakened eyes enough

to face to face up to the sight’s field expanded
   to insight.    The lake can

curl up like a map for poems to have
   these likenesses to graph,



then come un-scrolled from semblance back
   to just this lake.    Water

cities are led to    layout
   beside.    But it is never stillness;

always the restoration
   from ice, from cloud, restoration to clear

liquid (as is most of our body)
   that if written with,    disappears.
 

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Age Acquired Acrophobia: Comedic Perspective
 

Still thinking down at ground level,
never having lived a floor this high before,

a peripheral glimpse off the fifteenth floor –
and I thought the lake, its green light the sun

angles from it sometimes, had come ashore
and the white sails on it,

these    moved as if nothing under them
these    were gulls in their multiple sea

levels they can tack across the tops of trees
like sailing and pull the lake over on you

trick, make parks, surrounding the cliff
apartments, that far below    deepen farther oceanic

perspective      ‘til drawing the straight line,
I catch on to the joke    of these stories.

 

_______________________________________________________


Inability to maintain tension and make minute correction
in the muscles that hold the body balance steady
so

Once, you felt poise in the body on the edge
Now your autonomic grabs the danger
by your testicles

Age ashamed to mention the 18,000 feet
within earshot of his cremaster’s freezing
memory     denies he ever climbed.
 


Hit


Comes that snap
in acceleration,    day yanking,

that really cracks    your neck,
taking off    your head

You land into
a standing on marbles balance,

the body adjustment’s rapidity
is the rhythm

of things & thought and
staying on your feet

The jerk    lock    robotic
look that you make flow

breakdance is    the real choreography
of it    the manic switch    hit


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Reductio ad …



    A dull growl of shovels jabbed at by snow
as if the mimicking white means also
to throw the shovelers on their backs out on the ground
bitten in the chest. Dogs – as silence is to sound –
suddenly on the edge of the clearing.



    Noise tries to cover noise in noise not to be/
be heard. And even silence must dig
to hear that distinct voice of noise not to be still with.
Those proofs that are dismissed   mean to intimidate the thought
suddenly on the edge of clearing
.


   The question part to the missed answer has to suffer
more question taken prisoner from right for wrong. Answer
takes over as question/’s place. Where differing is clouded out,
where answer gets questioned through is
suddenly clearing –


   A question gets over the answer and moves
on if it works to better work. The answers fight.
To pass beyond a point where that which is passed through
can have an effect upon is
at this point


to clear



*



   A dull growl of shovels jabbed at by snow
as if the mimicking white means also
to throw the shovelers on their backs out on the ground
bitten in the chest.


   Noise tries to cover noise in noise not to be/
be heard. And even silence must dig
to hear    that distinct voice    of noise not to be still with.


  The question part to the missed answer has to suffer
more question hostaged from right for wrong. Answer
takes over in question/’s place.


  A question gets over the answer and moves
on if it works   to better work. The answers fight.
Like dogs.



*



Dogs – as silence is to sound –
suddenly on the edge of the clearing.



– Those proofs that are dismissed mean to intimidate the thought
suddenly on the edge of clearing.


   Where differing is clouded out,
where answer gets questioned through as    is
suddenly clearing –



   The answers fight.
To pass beyond a point     where that which is passed through
can have an effect upon     is
at this point



   to clear


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Copyright © Ed Roberson 2007

 

 

Ed Roberson's seventh book of poetry, City Eclogue, was published spring 2006, Number 23 in the Atelos series. He taught as Visiting Artist at Columbia College Chicago the past two and a half years. He is currently teaching the Winter quarter at Northwestern University and will be Visiting Artist there for the 2007 Fall quarter.

He has won the Iowa Poetry Prize, 1995; the National Poetry Series, 1998; received the Lila Wallace - Readers Digest Writer’s Award, and was finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2000. His poems have been included in The Best American Poetry in 2003 and 2004.