After
fire, ash. Warmth
under, pale wisp-paper
above, all blown around.
After
flood, muck. Damp
all the way through,
deep and sucking, holding fast.
After
love — what? Call that
what? That hot bog
that won’t let you go?
After
love, then? Call it
nothing. Don’t name it.
Fire, flood, ash, mud, and enough.
Dark Matter 
April 8th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
I like this poem a lot, and it reveals itself more on multiple reads. This is one of the reasons I like poems that thwart the narrative (as opposed to crowning or eliminating it.)
I feel like there are some possibilities for exploration here with vowel sounds, long and short. For instance, the third stanza is the slipperiest as far as content (less concrete than the others) yet contrasts this with a wonderful structure of short vowels (hot bog) until the last line (won’t let you go.) It works because there’s something comfortable (sonically) in the complication.
The other stanzas have noticeable long/short vowel tension, but it doesn’t seem as purposeful. But even when it isn’t, a lyric (like this) gives room for extended contemplation in a way that (for me) non-lyrics don’t.
April 8th, 2012 at 9:17 pm
Thank you, Matthew. Thoughtful as always…will seriously consider the sonics more as this was a piece I’d actually forgotten writing.