Indirection

"Poetry is the kind of thing you have to see from the corner of your eye," said the poet William Stafford. "If you look straight at it you can't see it, but if you look a little to one side it is there." As I contemplate your life in the immediate future, Virgo, I'm convinced that his definition of poetry will be useful for you to apply to just about everything. In fact, I think it's an apt description of all the important phenomena you'll need to know about. Better start practicing your sideways vision. ~ Tiresias

A Silly Poem*


The Silly Pirate / skirred back 'round
encircling / all the loss he'd found.
Gathering up / in his worn treasure box
the bits of gold / that had been their thoughts.


Some will blame / the reckless ways he lived.
Certainly question / the reckless things he said
while / a not-so-fair maiden / in her darkness sits
blaming herself / for the things she hid.


Unwittingly / a liar / she had made of him.

Confusing his honesty / for a phantom's hymn.
Hallucinations / invocations / drifting out to sea.
Communication / complications / drowning in the deep.


She offered no shore / he offered mutiny in-kind.
She anchored her heart / knowing a Tempest's mind.
And watched him depart / sailing half mast

while bearing the ensnaring / of her tangled past.


But Silly Pirate / you've skirred back 'round
encircling / all the loss we'd found.
Gathering up / in your worn treasure box
these bits of gold / that had been our thoughts.


*Confession: I wrote a great deal of poetry in October that I never posted. I think I need more practice.