Partial Poetry

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My sister Margaret and I were talking about my recent post “Of Photographs and Memory.” I told her that while I often labored for days or even weeks on the prose posts, poetry often presented itself to me pretty much finished, needing only a bit of spit and polishing before getting tacked up on the Wall. 

That isn’t quite the whole story. I’m not really sure where the poetry comes from, but apparently sometimes something gets lost in transmission. For example this came flitting into my head around midnight:   

Upon (or around) the slender shoulders of memory 

We (or I) drape (or wrap) dreams that might have been. 

It is now 3:12 AM, and I’m still here with these two lines. The obvious problem is that this appears to be a fragment of a longer work. It flirts with the proper number of syllables for a haiku, but possible edits make it a touch too close to call.  And even if it is an enigmatic haiku-type construction, the narrative is frustratingly incomplete. What memory? Whose shoulders? Which dreams?  But even without answering those questions the parentheses indicate that, as a rather mysterious fragment, some editorial decisions remain:  

Around instead of upon? If you put something “upon” the shoulders of another, it is a burden as in “the whole world is upon my shoulders.” But if we place something “around” the shoulders of another it becomes a protective gesture, as with a child or a lover. 

We or I? “We,” of course, is more universal which implies a greater truth - a statement that is true for all. On the other hand “I” is personal, so the action is the result of my personal choice and may imply an interaction with a specific memory, a particular person who receives this dream memory. 

And finally, drape or wrap? “Drape” has a more formal feel to it, as if a set designer or an interior decorator were poking the memory, trying to get it to hang just right between the present and the past. “Wrap” seems more protective, and so fits better with “around” than with “upon.” 

Hence we really have two different treatments of this poetic intrusion. First the more formal: 

Upon the slender shoulders of memory 

We drape dreams that might have been. 

And, more personally, 

Around the slender shoulders of memory, 

I wrap dreams that might have been. 

I prefer the second, but that could change before the rosy-fingered dawn starts doing pull-ups on my windowsill. Consider the notion that shoulders need not necessarily be “slender.” Sandburg intrudes with his “broad shoulders.” Whole different ball game.  

Wish these damn things came with instructions, or I could learn not to write them down. Just roll over and go back to sleep. You know I’d forget the whole thing by morning. 

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