The Lever

This is a photo of a digging bar, weighs about 30 pounds, six feet long, with a point at one end and a little flattened at the other. You can move some big, heavy objects with this thing.

Almost all poetry writing is like dancing to me. I wait a while for the music to percolate through and I’ll spot a likely gal (idea) and ask if she’d like to dance, seeing as how her toe was already tapping and her head already bobbing. I know where the dance will occur. I know about how long a dance tends to be. I have a general idea how to dance and when the music stops, that’s a good cue that the dance is over. I try not to push things and if she wants to lead, that is fine with me. If she prefers I take the initiative, I’ll go with that. Every idea is different and requires its own approach. I am as patient as each idea requires me to be. And that is how I write (almost all) poetry.

There is a second type of poem that arrives fully written and I simply have to record it. This doesn't happen often, but often enough and it's a real treat to be a part of that kind of event. It also can make me feel a bit like an imposter to say that I wrote that poem when in reality all I did was take dictation. I do get some small clue that I was responsible for the poem when I take a closer look at it (after the scribing) and realize that parts of it had been floating around in my head, in my sleep, in my daydreams for years.

But the third kind, like the one below, are written from a place where ordinary thinking doesn’t occur. It’s like walking blind. You knowing where you are but not the direction you are going. Yet even with all that, the destination is not clear. Having a destination is usually integral while writing a poem. Anybody can start a poem, after all, but you’ve got to have an ending in mind if you want to complete one.

It comes from something as close to subconscious thinking as can be possible and still be conscious enough to follow the trail and write it down as it is happening. It’s the act of planning and doing simultaneously. When it happens, which is rare, this kind of poem is the result and I am just as curious as any first time reader as to what it means. This type is different because it has not been floating around at all.

Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

I would appreciate any comments because I’m not sure what this is. I do know that with almost every poem I write, I’m swinging for the fences, so there’s that.

                        The Lever

              I try to raise my sights,
                     to aim higher,
       to shoot for the largest target.
                  Is directly vertical
         high enough, with a spread
          of shot equal to this world
          or should it be bigger still?

        Hell, even Archimedes knew
        no one had a lever that large
       but we began to think about it,
                       to imagine it
            and that's the beginning,
            that's the important part.

            Someone finds the lever
                    under a nebula,
           another finds the fulcrum,
                 behind a dead star
                  and soon enough
            very large things indeed
                   begin to happen.

              From up here the lever
              could look like a bomb
              destroying everything,
                 or it could be love,
                 uniting everything.

          That is the nature of sights
            and where you set them.
                You can shoot high
               or you can shoot low
              and if you get it wrong
                   very few people
                     will ever know.