TIME: for John Perlman

This poem is for John Perlman. John was not my only poetry teacher, but he was the only teacher I had who was a poet, and his influence on my writing, and on my view of myself as an artist, and what it means to be a poet, were profoundly shaped by him. Recently I read his book The Natural History of Trees. To read this book requires a level of focus and engagement that only poetry of the highest order demands. Difficulty that slowly yields sense, in which the thing said reveals itself in flashes that accumulate, ideas and images that evolve and develop on the page, is a pleasure I only experience in a poem. Philosophy also engages in this way but beauty is mostly absent, except for the abstract beauty of system. In poetry it is the particular and its link to the abstract, the universal, that is beautiful; aside of course from the scenery and the euphony of the line. I cannot say what John’s book is about, other than to say it is about trees, and the attention he has paid to them as a man and as a poet. A lifetime of craft and meditation and thinking is in these poems, which are written out in prose lines, mostly without punctuation. Each poem is to a specific tree. It might have folklore, history, botany, alchemy, mysticism, tirade, politics, wisdom or all of the above swarming around in the box on the page. Lyricism is a single strand in a weave of many voices. Attending to the currents of the words, the shifts in tone and perspective, is like walking through the forest and seeing here and there vistas, or ponds, or dense corridors of trunks, all alike, and then a clearing, a change of scene. It might be the smell of water giving way to mud and leaves and then pine. It might be the sound of wind, then rain, or a pilated woodpecker cry/laughing in the high leaves. To read his book is to be in a mind and a body, ears, eyes, heart. John is a Buddhist. That is his perspective. The poems are spiritual practice. They serve multiple purposes. I wish everyone I know who loves a good poetic adventure would read these poems. Now, of course, I must get to myself! I wrote this poem, Time, after reading the book. After, I realized it is for John. It is my little tribute to a great poet and teacher, to a friend.

TIME
for John Perlman

time
who was never friend
who once was drag
and now is end

wine
at a feast in a crag
a bow and a bend
the echo of a brag

mime
of memory spent
chasing the rag
to own what’s lent

in the lag
time went