"I was released from forms"

Corsons Inlet
A. R. Ammons (daqui)



I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning

to the sea,

then turned right along

---the surf
--
---------------rounded a naked headland
--
---------------and returned



along the inlet shore:



it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,

crisp in the running sand,

------some breakthroughs of sun

--but after a bit



continuous overcast:



the walk liberating, I was released from forms,

from the perpendiculars,

-----straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

of thought

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends

----------of sight:



----------------I allow myself eddies of meaning:

yield to a direction of significance

running

like a stream through the geography of my work:

----you can find

in my sayings

---------------swerves of action

---------------like the inlet's cutting edge:

--------there are dunes of motion,

organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance

in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:



but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events

I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting

beyond the account:



in nature there are few sharp lines: there are areas of

primrose

-----more or less dispersed;

disorderly orders of bayberry; between the rows

of dunes

irregular swamps of reeds

though not reeds alone, but grass bayberry, yarrow, all . . .

predominantly reeds:



I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries,

shutting out and shutting in, separating inside

-------from outside: I have

-------drawn no lines:

-------as



manifold events of sand

change the dune's shape that will not be the same shape

tomorrow,



so I am willing to go along, to accept

the becoming

thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends establish

------no walls:



by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek

to undercreek: but there are no lines though

-----change in that transition is clear

-----as any sharpness: but "sharpness" spread out,

allowed to occur over a wider range

than mental lines can keep:



the moon was full last night: today, low tide was low:

black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk

of air

and, earlier, of sun,

waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact,

caught always in the event of change:

----a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals

----and ate

to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab,

picked out the entrails, swallowed the soft-shelled legs, a ruddy

turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits:



risk is full: every living thing in

siege: the demand is life, to keep life: the small

white blacklegged egret, how beautiful, quietly stalks and spears

---------the shallows, darts to shore

------------------to stab —- what? I couldn't

----see against the black mudflats—a frightened

----fiddler crab?



---------the news to my left over the dunes and

reeds and bayberry clumps was

---------fall: thousands of tree swallows

---------gathering for flight:

---------an order held

---------in constant change: a congregation

rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable

-------as one event,

---------------not chaos: preparations for

flight from winter,

cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, wings rifling the green clumps

beaks

at the bayberries

---a perception full of wind, flight, curve,

---sound:

---the possibility of rule as the sum of rulelessness:

the "field" of action

with moving, incalculable center:



in the smaller view, order tight with shape:

blue tiny flowers on a leafless weed: carapace of crab:

snail shell:

--------pulsations of order

--------in the bellies of minnows: orders swallowed,

broken down, transferred through membranes

to strengthen larger orders: but in the large view, no

lines or changeless shapes: the working in and out, together

--------and against, of millions of events: this,

-----------------so that I make

-----------------no form of

-----------------formlessness:



orders as summaries, as outcomes of actions override

or in some way result, not predictably (seeing me gain

the top of a dune,

the swallows

could take flight—some other fields of bayberry

-------could enter fall

-------berryless) and there is serenity:



-------no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,

or thought:

no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:



terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities

of escape open: no route shut, except in

---the sudden loss of all routes:



-------I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will

not run to that easy victory:

------still around the looser, wider forces work:

-------I will try

-----to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening

scope, but enjoying the freedom that

Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,

that I have perceived nothing completely,

-------that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.


- - -
and on it.






lyrical articulation of small moments of experience.

Cascadilla Falls

-- .

Their Sex Life
A.R. Ammons


One failure on
Top of another

- - -

interview:

"PF: Right, and a lot of your poems seem to be concerned with their own procedures as they go along, they reflect back on themselves.


Ammons: Procedure could come to be the essential narrative, you see."