Sunday 1 July 2012

Reaching

For the virtual blood beyond the pale

There's all of us
from every other place
in our smashed up boats
throwing the weathered ropes
across dead water
to the verdant,
mapshy dark
of harbour.

8 comments:

  1. And the line has reached all the way here --

    Thinking of this late fragment of Keats, left (like so much that comes from the heart) unfinished:

    This living hand, now warm and capable
    Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
    And in the icy silence of the tomb,
    So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
    That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
    So in my veins red life might stream again,
    And thou be conscience-calm’d--see here it is--
    I hold it towards you


    ("mapshy" -- just the word!!)

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  2. Thank you, TC. I can see it.

    As to mapshy, I thought about how to put it on the page. In the end, I followed Uncle Jim's example and stuck them together. Sometimes, hyphens and spaces won't do.

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    Replies
    1. It's funny. I love maps (we have a vast print of an early Ordnance Survey map of Skye in our front room). However, the thought of some place that slipped the attention of the surveyors delights me. As bound up with my particular locality as I am, I'm never quite at home. Home is what I don't have plans for.

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  3. I think a lot of people could get something out of this as makes me feel we are all together as one but dont really realise it and all have our own personal battles although we dont see them as we are blinded by our own perspective .
    I have a real strong pictue in my head of people with their ropes and just adore the word Map-shy i will use it tomorrow in a sentence ... maybe not

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  4. That's a big part of the feeling I wanted to put across, Lou.

    I'm glad you caught the end of this rope I threw over.

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