I’m just home from two weeks of treasure hunting at the Banff Centre’s Wired Writing Studio, where I was part of a convergence of the like-minded. It was a great time of sharing tips, encouragement, and way too much food. We worked in a bowl of mountains and I had a close encounter with an elk while prying a piece of cliff out of the ground. I managed not to get et.

I’ve left feeling like I’m learning a new language, like I need to learn that language. My usual one is boring me now.

Don Domanski challenged me to go deeper into metaphor and to stop truncating my endings. He shared an exercise that has transformed the way I begin days, so I now start by playing with two disparate words, looking for the connection that is always there. And he let me hold his meteorite—we have the same passion for rocks from earth and space. I left Banff with my own billion year old chip on a string around my neck. ‘Shopping for the Universe’ may appear here one day, when it’s feeling better.

Today’s poem is a revisit of the one in my Editing an Ending post. My hard work had paid off. Don liked it when I submitted it to him as part of my three poems a day. He just didn’t think it was over yet. He wanted more.

Let’s look at what I called the Current Version last time:

Wind Moans

We’ve pulled the curtains, can’t see
the estuary’s mouth black rippled
under barest glint of cloud
torn stars. Can’t see Wales
gold and silver on far shore,
can’t hear cars whizzing down
its ribbon strips of highway.
Glass is old, sits wind-rocked, allowing
the tossing of frenzied leaves, rush
of tide on beached rock to enter,
a long, undulating moan.
You lie in deep duvet my body needsas cold finds bone, thinks of days before
metal clanked heat out, to when sleet spat,
found gaps, when coal dust’s black-sooting
of fingers, lungs couldn’t reach
room’s corners. We are temporary, one night
on a long road, our journey the safe kind.
Those who came before knew only
river and winter’s bite.

I told Don how many endings I had already written for this poem and that I wasn’t good at them. He suggested I treat them as a new beginning. He wanted me to pay attention to the breathing.

So I did. Starting a new stanza forced me to revisit the movement in the poem and I realized I’d left it hanging. That was Don’s point.

I had started that morning by playing with the two words Don had given me as an example for the word/play exercise: bathroom and cemetery. Not perhaps the most obvious choices. But I’d made it. I’d sat there breeding images under my fingers until the leap between the two words became clear.

And that became the ending I wanted for this poem. Don approved it too.

Latest Final Version:

Hearing Your Voices

We’ve pulled the curtains, can’t see
the estuary’s mouth black rippled
under barest glint of cloud
torn stars. Can’t see Wales
gold and silver on the far shore,
can’t hear cars whizzing down
its ribbon strips of highway.
Glass is old, sits wind-rocked, allowing
the tossing of frenzied leaves, rush
of tide on beached rock to enter,
a long, undulating moan.

You lie in deep duvet my body needs
as cold finds bone, thinks of days before
metal clanked heat out, to when sleet spat,
and found gaps, when coal dust’s black-sooting
of fingers and lungs couldn’t reach
the room’s corners. We are temporary, one night
on a long road, our journey the safe kind.
Those who came before knew only
river and winter’s bite.

I brush my teeth, knowing the mirror wants
to let me go. It erases us
each time we pass, leaving no stones
in grass, no flowers propped
against a few sad words. Each soul
is rootless in the room’s darkness
when I turn out the light, joining
you in bed. I hear their coughing
louder than your breath.

Of course, the other way time passes is with great poetry. Since I’m working with a master, I’m rereading him. Besides All Our Wonder Unavenged, I’ve also been lingering over Parish of the Physic Moon (which is sadly only available used).