20190612.0430

I've posted on 12 June seven times previously in this webspace: 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. The last four years have presented poems, either in sequence or independently. The earlier three are short prose pieces, with the 2014 ranting against disregard for the academic humanities, the 2013 musing on my now long-lapsed study of aikido, and the 2010 reflecting on what was then commonplace in my classrooms and is now far less so (in part because I teach so much less now than I did before). As is often the case, the verse attracts my attention more than the prose, largely because I think the prose explains itself in its own overly verbose way. (I've been accused of writing turgid prose more than once. I could quip that it's more tumescent, but I don't know how well that joke would stand up.)
As I read the 2015 poem, I have to think that I was describing a toilet. I know I have a tendency towards scatological humor; I never have outgrown poop and fart jokes. (I am in good company among Geoffreys for that, as the Miller's Tale attests, among others.) I imagine it's fairly clear to readers that I've not. Whether it's similarly clear that the 2015 poem is a toilet piece or just one fit for a toilet is less certain. Hell, even I'm not really sure, and I wrote it. I suppose it bears out Wimsatt and Beardsley a bit more, anecdotal as it is.
The 2016 piece is a bit more opaque to me. I know I have a tendency to write riddling pieces that describe things or people in oblique terms. I do not think the 2016 poem is such a piece, though. Writing that moves of its own accord might still be an interesting idea, and I might follow up on it in one of the other venues I maintain; I always need to be doing more writing, even when I am writing, and that means I need material about which to write. But I do not think that what I wrote corresponds to any physical object. Then again, it's been years since I wrote the piece; it may simply escape me at the moment. Enough does, certainly.
I am happier with the 2017 piece. I'll admit that my meter gets a bit ragged at times, that the cadence is looser than it ought to be. The rhyme scheme--the four triplets and a couplet I prefer when I try to write sonnets--works well, and I am pleased with the description of the Texas Hill Country I give. I still rise early in the morning, still prize the quiet and look with love on the scrub-clad hills under the moonlight, silver turning cerulean through pinks and golds as the sun rises. And it is still the case that I cannot linger looking as long as I would like; work still wants doing, now as ever, and I yet have responsibilities I must meet.