Noun-Verb Continuum

28 October 2021

Another trespass

On tan cottage and red house

Set back from the road

Set backs define age

Our age, each age, death’s approach

Revving us to live

Was that the yogi

Or Heidegger? College kid?

Death obliges us

To do, else impasse

Make us immortal, like no

Thing we can see

Black sand beach, blue sea

I took some rocks and black sand

For friend’s widower

Whispered in Pele’s

Ear, deaf to the state sign's mouth

Ordering stasis

In name of tortoise

Walled off from crowd, happy I-

phones appropriate

Turquoise, white flayed fringe

Of wave, our last stop before

We left, she left ten

Days later, tidal pools

Some months past that private earth-

quake; he plans his beach death

Canoe to other

Side, myth and reality

Both, if not at once

We can choose to die

Makes us strong this letting go

Like fish nets released

To tide and random

(Or is it?) chance like a die

Oddly singular

For dice, its living

Noun, solid until you roll

It, evanesces

Then, abstract numbers

Asemic equations, la-

Va, meaning to go

As “she” or “he” go

Or wai, as the ocean does

Make each noun a verb

So harbor harbors

Us or bay bays at crescent

Sky afflicted moon

Like Lilith on leash

Unleashing instinct to hunt

Kalij scatter off.

 

Note: Noun-verb exercise based on a section of Robin Wall Kimmerer's _Braiding Sweetgrass_.