The Day After (Stone # 13)

The Day After-Feb 10th

The wedding is over

The Day after is also gone

The bride has left

All that remains is the withered festoon

and some scattered rice and turmeric on the floor...

(Right from the beginning of the project we've been encouraging you to really look, and listen and so on and record what you discover. The best of the stones are ones that put us straight in touch with the world, often in a fresh way. In the best small stones, the writer is almost invisible.

In a good poem the poet disappears. That's what the struggle with language is all about. The point is that in the finished poem you don't lay yourself bare. 

Reading the above, I stopped short! I went back to look at my stones...and there in almost every single stone, 'I' loomed large! It was all about me...I was hardly 'invisible'. My writing has always been about laying myself bare!! Where do I conceal myself as I look, listen and perceive? Interesting, challenging...)