Better Late Than Never

Certain words and the feeling of the letter mentioned in my last post in its entirety brought to mind two of my favourite songs, Astral Weeks by Van Morrison and Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads. So I decided to lace some of the word from the letter with lyrics from these songs with a nest of my own words. Yes I did just say a nest of my own words. If you look for the lyrics of the two songs I mention you'll see the overlap.

After having written the poem I was reminded of another Van the Man lyric, 'I'll watch the ferry boats and they'll get high', from Sweet Thing, possibly his best song ever. I wanted to include it, for I guess obvious reasons, but though I like the imagery, the mood doesn't really fit my versicals.

Looking at the songs and feeling their meaning made me realise that hope is there but hard to see glimmering in lots of poetry, musical and otherwise. Somehow Astral Weeks seems less negative than Once in a Lifetime, but then it's also more balloon-like in its abstraction which to me makes it more meaningful, by which I mean when I listen to the song I feel meaning rather than understand meaning. Whoa. Far out.

There's an extended maritime metaphor which I had to take care not to let carry me away - I wouldn't want to be spirited away by the waves to an island of cheesiness, would I. I think 'the waves convey a limit' works though; sort of a pleasing contradiction. Then there's the ancient belief that the earth is flat and if you sail too far you'll fall off the edge beyond which monsters lay in wait to gobble you up. Ultimately thought it best to limit the influence of that particular stream of thought... Though it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the world is in fact flat, so there.

Not convinced the title works, if I think of a better one I'll change it. Surface tension is something I learned about at school in biology. It's what the molecules do at the top of a glass of water, they form a kind of film or skin, which creates that bubble effect. I've always found that interesting. I use it in the third stanza and interwoven is the idea of the self or ego or id or whatever as a vessel or shell, so that even though our outer self may feel a bit lost (at sea), the inner us is intact, benign, in the same place it always was.

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Surface Tension

The pressure of the past presses on the chest,
harries as the eternal search for home
raining cliche resembles shafts of light:
Time doesn't hold us nor is she after us.

The shell-vessel, bobbing on the precipice
teetering as it drifts further, the buffeting winds
capricious, squalls which whip the shell toward
or away; mood is not weather though, we forget.

We forget and let, let go of the reins and sink
the drowning eyes cast upward, shafts of hope
still visible, the surface above the shell of tension
promisingly simple, sheer as satin, cliched.

Engulf the future, embrace the doubt
way up in the heaven, better late than never
so far away, the horizon seductive in its symmetry
let self re-appear, a home on high.

Be not drawn, the waves convey a limit
gaze turns to hypnotic state but the distant line
remains forever afar, the ancient sailor knew
he would stay back in healthy fear.