Written in a challenge to discuss his relationship with poetry itself, this work reflected the poet's growing affection for the works of poet Donald Hall and the language patterns in and around New Orleans, where he was living at the time (2003).
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there is no fear on the edge:
joy.
joy is what I find in the instants
between moments
when my feet are touching nothing but
sky
and the rocks recede
to return.
sooner or later.
driven by grave gravity
and the intemperate nature of natural law.
but
in the brisant moment,
leaping from
precipice to precipice,
I am reborn,
triggered and transfigured.
worn away are the chains of
the pains of
the stains of
mortal mediocrity
and I -
I am one with the clouds.
and I rain poetry.
(for that is my nature.)
as you turn your face skyward
to catch a few drops
on a tongue parched
by the dry air of memory
and the sun of shallow sentiments,
sold in the Hallmark rack
in the name of mass seduction.
and I rain poetry.
to irrigate the fields of forever
and make them ready for the seeds
planted without your realizing it
when you waved to me
as I ran the cliffs
high above the plains of stale acceptance.
and danced.
and danced.
and danced like a hurricane.
at the thought of you,
naked in the rain.
and I rained poetry.
bringing the thunder at the appropriate moment
when all other senses were spent
and only sound could
penetrate
the wet shell of overloaded synapses.
what passes for the echo
of fire that surged
and purged
the very ions of our irony.
and I rained poetry.
calling the winds to lift me.
to gift me with the words
that you would carry,
eroded into your sandstone soul.
nevermore the monolith,
but an aggregate of your essence
with flecks of my pitchblende.
bound to you by eloquence
that quenched an ancient thirst,
cursed to you
in a garden you will never see
except in the mirages of the maelstrom.
and I rained poetry.
and it was nothing.
compared to a single, honest kiss.
but it was,
in the absence of passion,
a worthy golem in the armies of solitude
up
on the cliffs
where I still dance with the winds.
and call the thunder.
even when no one watches.
or cares
or dares
to dance along.
(for that is my nature.)
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.