My Blog Week: May 24 to May 30

A Word on the Week

This week has been tough, and…as things have fallen out…the serial novel I started writing in 2018 has two plot undercurrents: the Spanish flu pandemic, that began in 1918, and a race riot, that I have taking place in 1901. I think my best, in treating this subject, is already there in what I’ve written. In twenty weeks or so, The Mirrors will have unfolded completely, and I hope my readers will take some uplift from its ultimate message. Meanwhile, today, a poem.

From Superstition the Pendulum

Your face carried home from the scene of horror

Let nature raise you a colossus that prows

Prows astraddle the edge of all landfalls

Clocks will crack and mirrors stop

Unluckiness the hostelman calls to roost

The iron ring for a knocker hangs

Sounds wood and metalcraft, chock and clang

And the hand that would be death’s

Lets the bob swing reversal at two and a half

Your eyes ring themselves in adamantine pursuit

And the hair-raising toom of your heel on stone

Cries time, time

Transgressors

With a cup of wine and a coat-collar buttoned

At their table, not turning, they are tripped inside

By a cat black-clothed with the spirits of her kind

While her eyes seem charmed and she weaves before them

Time, time

They will feel waters close

Time, time

Know the follower knows

Time

But unwind

Time

Open eye

Time