The Incommensurate /
Though incommensurate with itself language nonetheless
Somehow shoots a few arrows into the vanishing point of things which have
come here from a great distance
Which makes it clear we have come here from a great distance or are asleep
To the future or for example the untenable proposition of flight from hollow
bones
On second thought let’s assume music streams through feathers from a great
distance
Let’s assume love is the name of the 10000 year old spear point found in 1970
not far from where I live with my wife in a house built for someone else in
1997
Let’s manage our assumptions from a great distance and understand distance
is timing leaving us beside ourselves sometimes even with laughter or maybe a
wound made of porcupine quills or with longitude because the ink with which
it’s written is time sensitive and there is no such thing as the opposite of
meaning
This poem won 2nd place in the 2017 Vallum Award for Poetry contest, judged by Nicole Brossard.
Brian Henderson is a GG finalist and the author of 11 books of poetry including The Alphamiricon, a deck of visual poem cards now online at Ubu: http://www.ubu.com/vp/Henderson.html. His latest is [OR] from Talonbooks. Unidentified Poetic Object is forthcoming from Brick in 2019. He is a co-editor of the Laurier Poetry Series, https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Series/L/Laurier-Poetry, and lives with his wife, Charlene Winger, in Grey Highlands Ontario.
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