Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Ineluctable Modality
So I wrote this for Creative Writing and it is one of my favorites. Though I realize the reader may not understand the context, it is modeled after the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." He's a genius, I'm a young poet. But also this is about my time in Newport, and my love of James Joyce and "Ulysses" which I still have not completed. I in fact could not come up with a character as wonderfully complex as Steven Dedalus.
I among the beach—
the only thing moving about me
The waves and the sea.
I in so many ways
of viewing life find a modality
—in which to be.
The sounds, the shells,
the encroaching swells.
Tell me all is well…
I myself
in part of this world,
myself and I,
ineluctable in my very present existence.
I’d rather not know
of the events that led me here,
the things that linger near
or would I rather know
more than I should.
Through the window
the omniescent birches
stand ahead
shadowing the cottage that
stands below.
O Young Steven Dedalus,
why this stream of conscious,
do you not see the vision?
I know my surroundings,
nature, sounds, and self,
though I do not know
of the way they find themselves
in my life.
When I lose the path of my footsteps
on the way home—the marked gone.
At the last sight of the sun,
I shall not know what is to be done.
My fate inevitable
rocks thrown into the ocean
worry splashed away
for only a moment
the weary shadow overwhelms
as the January clouds envelope.
The tide is changing
And so am I.
It is evening and so I go,
Through a modality
what is visible now
The darkening sky
and the nearby cottage.
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