Lyrical Somerville – June 19

On June 19, 2013, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times
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Poet Paul Pines, a poetry world acquaintance of mine sent me his latest poetry collection, and granted me permission to reprint a poem.  Here is his statement that he sent the LYRICAL:
Poet Paul Pines.

Poet Paul Pines.

A WORD ABOUT NEW ORLEANS VARIATIONS & PAROS OUROBOROS

EMBODIED IN WHISTLER’S BLUE

 

My love of New Orleans goes back to my first sight of it as a twenty-three year old galley man of a freighter on a voyage Gulfwise. Then there were no doors on the bars on Magazine Street that didn’t swing, and buskers danced or sang on every corner. I first felt the mystery of Paris shortly thereafter when my sense of time and space collapsed while crossing the Pont L’Archiveche. These two cities are forever twined in my mind by an underlying sense of color and tone that I tried to capture in the poem “Whistler’s Blue/ A Nocturne”, after a painting by the artist who was no stranger to both places, or this field and tone which is captured in his use of  the color blue.

 

WHISTLER’S BLUE /

A NOCTURNE

 

If a man appears alone

on a bridge

 

on a snowy evening

walking toward

 

a series of lights

in a row of windows

 

he doesn’t necessarily

have a future

 

or a past he is simply

a point on a grid

 

part of a composition

that tells us

 

what it is

while implying it is

 

more than it says

we follow him

 

into the night

because of the blue

 

we want to know

from whence

 

he’s come and where

he’s going

 

because the blue

envelops

 

everything but is

thin as air

 

because it’s everywhere

like the nerves

 

of an acrobat

in pain

 

and we can hear it

asking us

 

to shed our skins

and follow

 

– Paul Pines

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.To have your  your work considered for the LYRICAL send it to:
dougholder@post.harvard.edu

 

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