Now I'd like to read the title poem from my forthcoming book,
Points on the Grid.
And I imagine there's a possibility that it
might be somewhat confusing.
This confusion is somewhat erased in the book
because it is after a series of poems which are concerned
about the poet working with particulars
and in this way reaching the universal.
And so there are references here to Odysseus,
who I see as a universal but because you pay so much close
attention to his particulars and it goes on and on,
I wrote an essay about it.
Points on the Grid.
It is a graph, then, with axis of the man cutting
across axis of the phenomenon of nature's next wave.
The meeting making a point, a place to put the finger
and pin the poem, any kind of statement.
The man's life, a series of points
strung into a wavering line on the graph, his grid of action.
His limitations hem him inside the boundary
stringing webs to cut, to make a way, a path, a surging
across met by nature's next wave,
a wonderful dive under the breaker.
Takes us to Odysseus, bouncing through waves
on the Aegean, the next likely larger than the last,
particular in its strength as the man meeting,
pinning it there, the poem.
But it goes on.
Makes shore and recedes for another.
As Odysseus, with unstopped ears straining
at the axis of the mast, unmindful of that sought-for
a point at the end.
That Penelope, a point on the grid presently unraveling
her own pattern.
Her knitted rows inexorable as the waves,
her needles making points in the graph
till they meet at that late bisection,
place to pin the poem.
The adventure, a casting back at all points,
places of divergence swing to left or right, split
seconds on the grid.
Locus or footprint where man meets the front edge
of nature's next wave.