The Father I Chose / Waiting to Dance

The Father I Chose

An ailing parent figure won't share, doesn't intend

To show the pain and encroachment of his end

He was never kin by womb's water

But by blood of the covenant, my beloved father

I know some of his faults, a few of his sins

Yet my love for him doesn't waver, never thins

Still, I see my idol's veneer crack and crumble

When he winces and should he stumble

I'll have to be ready to pick up his heavy crown

My beloved Atlas is getting ready to set the world down.

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Waiting to Dance

Spiders should perform Swan Lake

Shaking, unstill gossamer threads holding dew and death

Shine sparkling in the still cool sunlight of early morning

Winding wind passes through the translucent web, a false alarm

Setting the still spider to sprint! and settle again,

Unperturbed, devoid of human frustration and disappointment

Needle thin limbs banded in ebony and gold,

Graceful and precise enough to make a premier maître de ballet

Swoon, or spit ladylike phlegm in vehement jealousy,

Move the endlessly patient predator back to her hideaway.

A gift from luck and fickle wind, the hideaway made of crumbling yellow oak leaf

Is garnished with less welcome pine needles

Tip, tap, tic, tic, tac

Swaying with the breeze that undulates with her home,

She absently rubs her empty pincers together,

As you or I may rub our hands together for warmth when bereft of winter mittens,

And waits to steal the short-lived luck of a fly.

Blue, green, shining, iridescent, as if a misplaced jewel

Grew wings and a sudden love for shit.

The most graceful ballerina on Earth

Waits to eat a bug.

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Reflection

My primary influence for Waiting to Dance was Sharon Olds' poem, Satan Says. I enjoy her use of gently flowing diction that incorporates suddenly curt and direct language in a way that disturbs the mental image I formed as I read her work. I applied this method twice in Waiting to Dance. The first was when I was used a simile comparing the spider to a premier maître de ballet expectorating her vitriol as a jealous missile of mucus and spittle. I liked the thought of such a dignified person, the epitome of womanly grace and kinetic etiquette, performing such a disgusting and socially inappropriate act of anger and professional resentment. I felt that the sudden contrast would shock the reader into forming a much clearer, sharper mental image of the ballet expert. Then that accentuation of the premier maître de ballet would translate into accentuation of the spider's grace. Richard Hugo lists one of the foibles of amateur poets as the impulse to force words into a preconceived mental mold that fits what the writer believes to be truth or the form his poem should take. I wanted to avoid this, so instead of forming an idea of what I wanted to accomplish or create prior to writing my new poem, I just thought for a moment about what real and specific image would feel nice to explore. The first that came to mind was a memory from growing up in the woods of Georgia. In my secluded and wooded home, there are a great many animals and insects that flourish unmolested by people. The banana spider is one of the most startling and beautiful of those local fauna. This kind of spider regularly grows to be about two whole inches and is a vibrant shade of yellow with black bands and sworls. They build shockingly huge webs and will scare you half to death if you suddenly come across one. The second use of Sharon Olds' "flow then shock" technique comes towards the end of Waiting to Dance, when I'm using concrete language to describe a common prey insect of the banana spider, the blue bottle fly. Blue bottle flies are actually very beautiful if you can disregard the fact that the most common place to come across them is a pile of dog turds. This contrast was used much the same as I did with the premier maître de ballet. The mental image of a gorgeous sparkling jewel is suddenly sullied by that of a pile of feces, which I hope shocked the reader from the complacency they had been developing while reading the pleasantly flowing diction. I used sound only once in Waiting to Dance because most of a spider's existence revolves around silence. I didn't want to ruin the mental scene in which the spider resides. This was in the thirteenth line of Waiting to Dance. Here I wanted to subtly trick the reader into having a deeper level of empathy for the spider. She obviously wouldn't make those sounds when moving, but when a human sees a spider's spindly legs moving it across a surface, they can't help but to imagine those sounds in the back of their minds. "Tip tap tic tic tac" goes the imagined spider, as though it were a many legged person trying to sneak across a dance floor in pointed heels. I tried to employ the same vibe throughout Waiting to Dance, that of careful, beautiful, graceful silence, because that vibe is the overarching message of the poem. That message is simply, "Look at that huge and scary spider and see past what everyone has always told you to see when you look at spiders. See past the eyes and legs and fangs, and out springs a masterful, beautiful mosaic of poise and deadly grace.". The flowing diction builds tension as the poem goes on, making the suddenly mundane resolution of "Waits to eat a bug" all the more jarring. What inspired my new poem was a tiny cobweb I saw on a bookshelf in the Barnes and Noble that I was writing in. I was casting about for a muse and as soon as I saw that cobweb my memory flashed back to the spider that most dramatically and immediately comes to mind when I think the word "spider". I took the chance of writing something that most would heartily disagree with, that a big scary spider can be beautiful and admirable. I'm glad I did, because even if no one agrees with me or likes Waiting to Dance, I don't care. It made me happy.