Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Jason's poetry

dear, dear husband of mine. It's already a life-long pursuit to ask yourself, "Who am I?" but marriage is watching another human being live that question. Sometimes you feel like you could answer it better than them. Tonight as we lay in the heat of a Montana evening for a few minutes before Jason had to fall asleep, he talked about realizing how much he is not a poet. He just doesn't appreciate poetry, or even most books, and wishes that the writer's main point would be out quickly. He appreciates beauty, but you can't convince him that writing is a dance. People don't just get out there on the dance floor and go into a 30-second convulsion, dust off their britches, and take a bow. No. There is sense to it, depth, meaning, coordination, build-up, the taking in and considering of seemingly incongruous parts of reality, resolution. But he won't have it. Instead, within a few minutes, the topic was Luke's fish. Here's what Jason said:


they're not pets,
they're not.
they are captive.
they are masses of nerve
and, and
and muscle.
they go left
right
left
right
right
up
down
and left again.
otherwise they just swim around.