Eye On Life Magazine

Make every day a beautiful day.

Eye on Life Magazine is a Lifestyle and Literary Magazine.  Enjoy articles on gardening, kitchen cooking, poetry, vintage decor, and more.

A Circle of Stones

polished by the current of the river.

 

By alluding to stones, I have disenchanted

the grave site of a goldfish. I am not responsible

for absence of culture, I hold to tight maudlin underdevelopment.

I scrub blindly at building grit, so the modifiers can send themselves

to market, clean again. I gave effective strategy a name: the slow bird

needs to start early for any hope of worm.

 

On the wrought iron fence of the churchyard

two crows spoke in low voices: script your methods

as methodical as possible, given the limits of crow vocabulary,

given the limits of time and space and available parking. Collect

as many resources as you can, force yourself happy.

In my dream he was staring out with wide eyes

from behind the glass of the bowl, lifting his gill cover

to breathe. He turned, swam to the top of the bowl, swam back.

 

The water began to fog and I haven’t slept since.

I can’t handle it, can’t hardly be handled

without rest. You should see the notes in the margin of this page.

 

James Tate’s right mind is drowsy. He identifies with writing through haze,

good practice for the dementians to come, the demons of disenchantment:

mute, blurry, or buried like thunder in a fog.

 

If consciousness is a system of organizing the clutter of conscience

what better way than the stark romance of writing by candle, sleepless, bobbing

over the page, struggling to describe a gingko tree, under whose fallen leaves

the new complexity of struggle is buried and adorned.

 

Jim Davis

Honorable Mention, Eye On Life Poetry Contest 2011-2012