Your Poem Capsule #2 // From the self not mine but ours

A.R. Ammons: Poetic

It was payday last Friday and you have been carrying around a sack of coins all weekend. How lovely they are, but how heavy! Your shoulders hurt from the weight you’ve been bearing, and I can tell.

I can help you. Step right up to the gacha gacha machine and lighten your load. This machine is filled with poems. After you insert a coin and turn the dial, the machine goes “gacha gacha,” and a decorative wheel begins to turn as your coin travels through a winding maze on its way to the slot that says stop.

The machine stops somewhere between a swallowing frog and a ball being dropped. A capsule is released into another slot. There is a metal flap - you lift it up.

How Odd! You think as an acorn reveals itself. Last time your poem came encased in classic plastic. Trees today. You lift off the acorn’s hat and there she is, a worn out poem on tattered printer paper. Divine. Divinity. Inside, a poem by A.R. Ammons. Poetics.

Poetics // A.R. Ammons

I look for the way

things will turn

out spiraling from a center,

the shape

things will take to come forth in

so the birch tree white

touched black at the branches

will stand out

wind-glittering

totally its apparent self:

i look for the forms

thing want to come as

from what black wells of possibility,

how a thing will

unfold:

not the shape on paper — though

that, too — but the

uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape

as being available

to any shape that may be

summoning itself

through me

from the self not mine but ours

And so it is. Refreshing. You read this poem again and again, reciting it back to yourself. Going away. Into the sun, the shade. What peace you are given. How kind the poet. You are wealthy today and make another deposit. The machine purrs. This time, a rose blooms from the gum flap and you must peel back the petals to access your poetry.

Poetics // A.R. Ammons

When the sun

falls behind the sumac

thicket the

wild

yellow daisies

in diffuse evening shade

lose their

rigorous attention

and

half-wild with loss

turn

any way the wind does

and lift their

petals up

to float

off their stems

and go

//

So there you are, acorn and rose petals and poems, sighing in the Mall of Love. Night falls. The irises, holding their cards close, await the morning when you will sit among the flowers and recite them poetry. It is time to go home. They are calling. You prepare to lift your knapsack, but the weight has transformed. It is light. It is empty! How?!

Worry strikes at the loss until you notice, by some magic, the coins are suspended in space, in motion. You go. Metal and rose bud ride a wind current on the slow walk home, glittering in the moonlight, taking shape of the Help You Need, the care you deserve, a hand to hold, all in generous beauty. You arrive and fall swiftly into a bed of silver and flowers. Sweet dreams of spring prepare you for what you have been waiting for. And go.