Friday, September 23, 2016

Jack Scott writes



Part III

Wakened into nightmare 
alert in ready vigilance, 
metabolism’s price, 
ancient instinct cast molten, 
congealed into the form of beast 
too loyal to leave the web 
untended for a moment, 
too stomach to be mind, 
too now ever to be then. 
Whatever could it do? 
Where would it go?

Milkweed, cradle of the web, 
wind-rocked and brittle, 
danced in frenzied tempo 
with extremity. 
Built better than she knew 
for a gentler use 
the web became a sail, 
prevailed 
when its anchor gave, 
the milkweed tower 
snapped off low 
from its purchase on the earth 
with a final body blow.

As a piece, 
the entire ship flew free 
coughed from earth complete: 
milkweed, web and spider: 
Dorothy sticking to her farm, 
her farm stuck tight to Dorothy. 
Fierce at first 
the course of clearing earth 
collisionless through all debris.

More slowly than its birth 
the tempest leaves 
the ravaged earth 
behind, below 
overcome at last 
by stronger victor, 
gravity. 
Silent 
at the lower edge of silence 
it sighs its last 
and dies in resignation 
upon the upper edge of air, 
thin and growing thinner, 
becoming very rare.

1 comment:

  1. In the 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz,” the main character, Dorothy Gale, was taken, along with her farmhouse home, by a tornado from Kansas to the magical land of Oz. After a series of adventures, she returned home by tapping her heels together three times while repeating, "There's no place like home." However, in the 6th book in the series, “The Emerald City of Oz” (1910), author L. Frank Baum related that Dorothy moved to the palace in the capital, while her guardians, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, settled in a farmhouse on its outskirts, after they were unable to pay the mortgage on the new farmhouse built at the end of the first book, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1900). Dorothy’s last name was not mentioned at all in the first two Oz books but appeared in Baum’s 1902 script for his Broadway play, “The Wizard of Oz,” as the setup for a punchline: She introduced herself as “one of the Kansas Gales," to which the Scarecrow replied, "That accounts for your breezy manner."

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