Rivers.

about an hour ago i was sitting down by the local stream, watching some ducks. at one point, my circle of focus centred on two smaller ducks who were finding some sort of nutrition in the stream of moving, putrid water. on one edge of this circle, three much larger ducks started to move toward the centre, while at another edge, so too did a black plastic bag, floating downstream. i know this sounds a bit like something that weird kid out of american beauty (he was really the worst element in an otherwise gorgeous movie) would delight in, but this swell of movement felt like a beautiful little piece of music. which, of course, got me to thinking about poems.

i like the rumour that goes around about how one of the first known bits of cuneiform was a bitch about how there's nothing new under the sun. somehow writing finds a need to always gesture to a better past, and complain about how tired all themes and concepts are these days. u can get that kinda idea from oldmate derrida. while i was thinking of my little, dirty northern seoul stream, a string of poems came to my mind - possum's waste land (my stream displays quite grandly the unglorious beauty of the human-induced fishflops of our world - our destruction is so teardemandingly gorgeous), bob adamson's writings of the hawkesbury river, john shaw neilson's beautiful, delicate "The Gentle Water Bird," (ok that's a lake, but i saw a crane - 학- as well as ducks and crap) and batblind old homer's oceanus... sitting by this stream seemed to make it impossible for me not to think of the massive weight of river literature bearing down, in, around, and thru my very eyes and brain.

it gets me to a-thinking. how the fuck could i possibly consider writing a river poem, when so many amazing things have been written about it. there seems to be no way to get my dirty little stream down on paper cleanly, without everything i've read (and haven't read) forcing itself onto my poor little bit of music. why write one at all? i love all those poems, but i'd prefer if i didn't have to engage their particular ethics in my writing - look what our greedy crusoe eyes and hands have done to our longsuffering island of a world.

it seems what i have to do is engage all these worldviews in even the simplest of little landscape poems. this is something that people like john kinsella, peter minter and kate fagan engage in a beautiful and complex manner. something i'd like to spend much more time exploring.