warm and languid Air caressed me, and i
fell
into the curve of your smile,
where Water tasted,
blended into what
i'd breathed, and your hands slipped me from where i'd fallen.
bootsteps heard on rocks, Waves slapped,
like little knocks
on castle doors
echoed
amalfi Cliff,
mafia maybe,
semaforo! smoldering
stare and after, warm smiles.
i covered
myself, but God
already saw, so did the night's
Sky, so did the Sea's surface that exposed
me to the Palisades and pounced on Positano tympanums
and rustled villa ruffalo,
refined rafaelo,
rugged ruffles,
ruffian truffles,
real gelato.
a baby's two-
toothed
grin, new life, new
outlook, as common elements felt
both our skin,
and shared reverberations of life
were stored deep in stone walls, memorized
in forms
familiar and not,
that struck out -
you know, nothing's solid,
no image stands still - 3x / second,
a new Saccade - but with you, your hand
on my arm,
steadiness beckons.
Christy Bergman,Fall, 2006
One inspiration for this poem came from the fact that despite transient, ever-changing perception, as input from our receptor fields, we have within us an invariant recall, or memory system within the cortex. This is one of the keys to intelligence, as put forth by Jeff Hawkins in his insightful book, On Intelligence. The poem was written in bursts as my mind's eye saccaded over the Amalfi landscape. I tried to use saccade-like stanzas and get the effect of lapping waves by using alliterated chorus lines. |