Whatever else it is, poetry is a work of art, emphasis on the word work. The poem below is a reworked version of the poem posted earlier this morning. I have said before that all these poems I post are part of a work in progress, they are all work that will be reworked into a larger scheme which will also take some work if it is to work as a poem. Poetry is a work of work in which the tools of the writer are words and feelings and experience and observation and readings from the cultural context which includes the work of other poets and of other writers: in other words, it is a discipline, which is work. The reading of poetry is also work, and I am grateful to all those readers who give their time to work through the poems I put up each day. Today’s reworking was inspired by the work of Louis Zukosky, the great American objectivist poet.

Shaping
the calculated
chaos

At daybreak
warm sun
invites us
to rise
to reassemble
the world

Empty eyes
open
longing for
the countable
stars
above love’s
making

Early hours
her blithe body
sheathed
beneath sheets
her breath
her stillness
her silence

Tug
of memory
of time
and place

struggle
to feel
to focus
sweet briar
hedgerow elms
a dog barking
amid shrill birdsong
fresh-blown roses
washed in dew
licked
by the frolicking
wind

chatter
of children
off to school
and distance
too
from a train
and a plane

and then
there is
you

John Lyons