«The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray
Poem written in bathroom in the middle of the night
My feet churned the dust like a tornado.
I approached Edinburgh
and then the continent went dark.
The wedding photographer was drunk.
He took pictures of ruins, of history.
An esplanade of smoking sphinxes
and grey coliseums
where we had lived once.
My body was all that was left,
whisking the ashes,
a relic of weather and population.
Opally Said:
on September 19, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I found the beginning of this poem captivating, with its unusual action-focused imagery. The last part of the poem, starting with the smoking sphinxes, lost me, it seemed to lapse into pictures, perhaps intentionally, but the relic imagery didn’t have much vividness for me. You probably have a more powerful way to communicate “My body was all that was left…” Is the last part of the poem the pictures taken by the photographer? the action of looking at pictures is also an action, and you probably have a special way to convey that action and your message of poignancy and loss.