POEM #16: Alive
(and a few miscellaneous notes)
Hello!
Past the paywall below, I have a poem for you that’s taken me three years to write; I’ve edited it once again today, and I think I shall stop—though a poem’s never done, they say (and we feel).
First, though, a few miscellaneous notes:
» To the new subscribers who have joined lately, THANK YOU. And a heartfelt welcome. You should know that, if you’ve joined as a paying subscriber, you have full access to the archives now—and may I gently suggest you catch up on the two short essays The Melodious Flux of the Mind of God and How I Learned That Only a Few Words Are Needed If You Find the Right Ones and Are Alive Within Your Human Body, as well as the poem The Weeping of My Eyes Has Been My Only Feast, and the longer essay, Children of the Sky (sequel coming soon).
» According to my usual pattern, I was aiming for a short-ish essay today, and I’ve been working hard on it, but it’s turning into something monumental (not lengthwise, but in the sense of going deep into what I’ve been thinking and feeling for a long time, and may cause relief and elation, or otherwise thermonuclear indignation, on your part, depending on what you’ve been thinking and feeling…so I went to spend more time on it, and hope to release it to you in a week. Until then—this poem.
» Speaking of which, this somewhat rigid pattern of long essay, poem, short essay, poem is feeling a bit too rigid for me, and it seems like it’s a bit overmuch for you, looking at reading and engagement rates, and so on; I’m planning on revamping the aesthetics of the site this week a little, and, in conjunction with that, recasting the vision slightly, and easing up on the schedule—a bit. (Still planning on sending you stuff every Friday—just want to make it a bit more manageable and groovy for us both).
» If you’re interested in this sort of thing, I was on Glen Scrivener’s channel, Speak Life, not too long ago, and we had what I remember as a very enjoyable conversation. Glen’s a great guy, and had plenty of good questions and keen insights and in general said everything way better than I did. Click on this to watch:
» For those of you who have preordered a US copy of my book, Sunlilies (the first edition ran out), good news—the first printing of the second edition shipped this morning, and as soon as I get them, I’ll start packing them and sending them out to you (they feature a new TreeDweller logo drawn by my lovely wife—and it’s totally sick, definitely worth the price of the book in and of itself, I think (she doesn’t)—go look at it on the website). And if you’re in or near the UK, or at least nearer there than the US, don’t forget that Martin Shaw’s Cista Mystica Press has just released their own edition of Sunlilies, too.
OK, poem for you below. It’s been a long time coming.
And it will probably seem like almost nothing—which, to me, is one of the many beauties of poetry, how it hides the anguish of its own genesis, like everything else does in nature.
love,
graham