The Cormorant

you are so really kind Marion. thanks for your eyes and ears and your beautiful soul!

what's mine is your's. im so honored. blessed to share poems with you here.

Marion, have you ever read the Revenant, a poem by Lady Tennyson? I ask because I just deleted a comma or two from the cormorant:) 

Thank you very very much. Encouragement is squared when it comes from those whose efforts and works you admire.

I have been blessed to have had many interesting colleagues and friends with whom I have shared work I believed in, or some portion of life's pleasures, joys and sorrows.

Here I have found more of both, colleagues and friends, engaged in what I love most, the mystery and beauty of poetry.

I have some catching up to do. So much here, to read first and then again, more smiles or thoughts to be provoked, more to be felt, more to learn.

Thanks for making me feel welcome here.

Bernie, thank you very much for giving this a good read.

I felt the ending as I began “writing” the last stanza, I found the
last line, as I wrote it. Some poems come “easy”, some hard😊.
I wrote this in my mind while at the beach, memorizing it as it
grew or changed. 

As you might guess, the minutes, hours, or days this took to write are
hard to calculate. I could say it took 4 hours, the time I was at the beach,
or perhaps, just minutes of diligent “work” spread out over the four hours.

In those minutes, in that one afternoon, it was delivered “complete” but
not in its final form. To arrive there, it took time at home to work a word
or a phrase and to settle on the punctuation that would, I hoped, lead
the reader to the cadence and phrasing I intended.

For more explanation, perhaps too much information:

Coming upon the cormorant, I drank in the place, the emotions I felt, the
questions that arose, the potential of the scene. By some means, I found the
first line and by building and repeating lines, phrases, stanzas, out loud or in
silence, I committed them to memory.

In between lines or stanzas, I swam. The cormorant was never out of my sight. I kept an eye on the vultures. From time to time, I left the poem to enjoy
the salt air, to watch for seals and dolphins, or the pelicans and other sea birds.

Once home, I put it on “paper”. I returned to it in the days that followed. I searched for different words or phrasing that would make the scene and my vision clear, but not too clear. I knew that less, was more. I made almost no changes.

In “the fisherman” and a few other poems, I have used the same process
of writing in my head and memorizing the lines as I “write”. The poem
usually arrives 90 % fully formed. At home, the last 10% takes longer than
the first 90%. I don’t use this method often but when I’m without
“pen and paper”, it helps me reconstruct the scene and the moment later.

If you've made it this far:) may I steer you to “The Revenant”, written by Lord Tennyson’s wife, Emily.

I recommend it to those who struggle like I do, to “finish” a poem. If you can’t
find it online, I’ll embed it in a message to you.

Thank you again.

Mark

:) i agree about the pre-eminence of endings. In "the cormorant", all the lines, as they developed, were a way for me to "stall" as I searched for the ending. For me, the ending provided an answer to a question, a very personal one.

Thanks again Bernie, your "nosiness" has helped free me, to feel free to ask questions of you and others.