Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Evidence/Clues

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“There is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty.” 

― Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton

"Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home."

― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Midweek Motif ~ Evidence/Clues

I nearly called this prompt "reading the signs"~so go with that if you wish.   Clues might be more fun, and lots and lots about evidence is in the news these days.  Do we seek these signs, clues, and evidence "to create order out of chaos" as Will Shortz says (see quote above)?  Or are we passing the time in game mode, entertaining ourselves? 

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem with one or more signs, clues, or pieces of evidence in it ~ and express where they lead.

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Against the Evidence

BY DAVID IGNATOW

As I reach to close each book

lying open on my desk, it leaps up   

to snap at my fingers. My legs

won’t hold me, I must sit down.

My fingers pain me

where the thick leaves snapped together   

at my touch.

                       All my life

I’ve held books in my hands

like children, carefully turning

their pages and straightening out   

their creases. I use books

almost apologetically. I believe

I often think their thoughts for them.   

Reading, I never know where theirs leave off   

and mine begin. I am so much alone   

in the world, I can observe the stars   

or study the breeze, I can count the steps   

on a stair on the way up or down,   

and I can look at another human being   

and get a smile, knowing

it is for the sake of politeness.

Nothing must be said of estrangement   

among the human race and yet

nothing is said at all

because of that.

But no book will help either.

I stroke my desk,

its wood so smooth, so patient and still.   

I set a typewriter on its surface

and begin to type

to tell myself my troubles.

Against the evidence, I live by choice.

from

 Akiba

BY MURIEL RUKEYSER

THE WAY OUT (an excerpt)

The night is covered with signs. The body and face of man,

with signs, and his journeys.     Where the rock is split

and speaks to the water;     the flame speaks to the cloud;

the red splatter, abstraction, on the door

speaks to the angel and the constellations.

The grains of sand on the sea-floor speak at last to the noon.

And the loud hammering of the land behind

speaks ringing up the bones of our thighs, the hoofs,

we hear the hoofs over the seethe of the sea.

All night down the centuries, have heard, music of passage.

Music of one child carried into the desert;

firstborn forbidden by law of the pyramid.

Drawn through the water with the water-drawn people

led by the water-drawn man to the smoke mountain.

The voice of the world speaking, the world covered by signs,

the burning, the loving, the speaking, the opening.

Strong throat of sound from the smoking mountain.

Still flame, the spoken singing of a young child.

The meaning beginning to move, which is the song.

Music of those who have walked out of slavery.

Into that journey where all things speak to all things

refusing to accept the curse, and taking

for signs the signs of all things, the world, the body

which is part of the soul, and speaks to the world,

all creation being created in one image, creation.

This is not the past walking into the future,

the walk is painful, into the present, the dance

not visible as dance until much later.

These dancers are discoverers of God.

 . . . . 

(Read the rest of this amazing poem, and listen to the poet's recording HERE.)

How I Learned Bliss

BY OLIVER DE LA PAZ

I spied everything. The North Dakota license,

the “Baby on Board” signs, dead raccoons, and deer carcasses.

The Garfields clinging to car windows—the musky traces of old coffee.

I was single-minded in the buzz saw tour I took through

the flatlands of the country to get home. I just wanted to get there.

Never mind the antecedent. I had lost stations miles ago

and was living on cassettes and caffeine. Ahead, brushstrokes

of smoke from annual fires. Only ahead to the last days of summer

and to the dying theme of youth. How pitch-perfect

the tire-on-shoulder sound was to mask the hiss of the tape deck ribbons.

Everything. Perfect. As Wyoming collapses over the car

like a wave. And then another mile marker. Another.

How can I say this more clearly? It was like opening a heavy book,

letting the pages feather themselves and finding a dried flower.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ the Wall.)