The windows become the
floor the
door the ceiling—
in
life jackets we
rise to the top
like a hatch now we
climb through it—
waddle
down the wall of
the hallway
toward what
light remains : the water ever
our
only light only
hope by the stairs
cascading— how
many times have we tilted
from
our most fervent intentions?
It works, right D?
ReplyDeleteMy most fervent intention is to leave this comment and thereby prove my ability to leave comments.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite section of this is the third stanza. The cadence, forced pauses, and doubling of "only" all project a sense of faint hope without the word hope ever being used. I like that. It seems to be the same way that natural elements like water and light can yield us hope in a rather vague unspecified and atavistic way. For that same reason I'm unsure about the word tilting in title and final stanza. I imagine this is being used directionally to indicate moving away from something at an angle, uncontrolled, awkwardly. However, I'm reading it against the primal history of light and water as a sort of historical placeholder for the medieval. Tiltling as a noble sport. Maybe it's just because I'm in London at the moment. In either case I'm wondering if tilting is the right spatial summation for this poem which asks such an important question about the gap between intention and reality.
ReplyDelete