The Apprenticeship

When I read over the poems 

from the apprenticeship last winter, 

I grieve only that I didn't write more poems. 

Awful dull to say, though I believe it, 

that season was cosmic, rare,

believed it even then, ventured to extract 

all that I was able. One January Morning

I entered the arts building and saw 

the glass door to the gallery 

open with nobody inside. 

I moved to the center of the wide space 

with notebook and pen, intending 

to write. I studied the massive 

paper works we constructed, mounted 

to walls with small magnets and 

suspended from the ceiling 

with yards of fishing line. The fragile

earth tones already fading. Each poem

on the apprenticeship I titled

“Caesura,” included a visible 

break in each line I believed 

to suggest eros enacted between 

two souls or the negativity inscribed 

in creation. I was guided  

by a confused theory of aesthetics, began desiring 

the artist as a generative experiment 

which soon became troublesome and real.

The invented world spilled over 

into physical life. For a time I possessed 

a knowledge I could stand upon. 

Then it left. I couldn’t even remember 

it’s hue. The world 

in isolation is like a lamp 

without a bulb. I waited 

in empty space surrounded

by images. No words came. No one walked in 

or asked what I was doing. Then, 

after a time, I left. Life and learning

is like this, a few gripping motions 

in the low still water, then 

dissipation, vacant space, width.