Improv week 2

 John Ashberry 

"As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat"

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free. 

Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight

Filters down, a little at a time,

Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,

As the sun yellows the green of the maple tree...

So this was all, but obscurely

I felt the stirrings of new breath in the pages

Which all winter long had smelled like an old catalogue.

New sentences were starting up. But the summer

Was well along, not yet past the mid-point

But full and dark with the promise of that fullness, 

That time when one can no longer wander aaway

And even the least attentive fall silent

To watch the thing that is prepared to happen. 

A look of glass stops you

And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?

Did they notice me, this time, as I am,

Or is it postponed again? The children

Still at their games, clouds that arise with a swift 

Impatience in the afternoon sky, then dissipate

As limpid, dense twilight comes. 

Only in that tooting of a horn

Down there, for a moment, I thought

The great, formal affair was beginning, orchestrated, 

Its colors concentrated in a glance, a ballade

That takes in the whole world, now, but lightly, 

Still lightly, but with wide authority and tact. 

The prevalence of those gray flakes falling?

They are sun motes. You have slept in the sun

Longer that the sphinx, and are non the wiser for it. 

Come in. And I thought a shadow fell across the door

But it was only her come to ask once more

If I was coming in, and not to hurry in case I wasn't. 

The night sheen takes over. a moon of cistercian pallor

Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed, 

Finally involved with the business of darkness. 

And a sigh heaves from all the small things on earth, 

The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons

Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere, and all the lower 

Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night. 

The summer demands and takes away too much, 

But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes. 

 ______________________________________________________________

"As One Forded The Pale Vapor" 

I tried each method, but only a few would seem nameable or real. 

Once,  I was that standing in a room where fantasy

Struggles around, in baby-steps, 

Holding out for something to happen. Soft phrases were interpreted,

As the sun blurred the beery pre-dusk...

So that was it, but uncertainly 

I saw the sphere of a new planet 

That all through last year kept quiet.

New thought explains this. But the year 

Was good and long, and summer had not yet past

But instead sulked with the design of that expanse,

Once you can no longer wander

And even your children are perceptive

Ready for each and every system.

A moment of reality shakes you

And you continue delirious: is this me?

Can they conceive of me, once, this time,

Or will it be delayed again? The lakes

Still mechanized, the skies become diluted 

With restlessness in the noontime haze, then descends

As crystallized, thick night approaches.

Only once in that tactful darkness 

Down there, for a minute, I dreamt 

That the event became real, calculated, 

Its reasons connected in a sentence, a configuration

That comprehends a universe, now, but slowly

Even slowly, but with dilated jurisdiction and subtlety.

The motive behind those mossgrown ruins?

They are weathered marbled robes. You have crept 

Long and blue, and feel like some misplaced poacher. 

Welcome. And I thought I felt slattern and waxen,

But it was only the damp midnight come to ask 

If I was here to gather some strange report. 

The night retraces its steps. A welded moon 

Looks like an enormous turtle going to the river, nameless, 

Finally concerned with the brickwork of sleep. 

And a whine rattles from the forgotten things on earth, 

Rubble, twisted steel, old conduits and sheets of newsprint 

In agonizing fields somewhere, and all the smaller 

Translations of rivers canceled beneath the muted landscape. 

The dawn addresses our theory of rivers,
But at night, drunkenly, stumbles homeward.