Poem: Rekindling

The question of what, really, is original thought and if there is such a thing.


Rekindling

I am a re-kindler, a plagiarist it seems
    of other’s thoughts, taken as my own
Today, just today in the car, an illustration
Something was said of dreamlike quality and
    I forget the example, perhaps an angle
    of the sun or both thinking the same thought
    and I mused that perhaps death was merely
    waking from the dream

I drove a while and came back to it
I really liked the ambiguity of that thought,
    said I may want to work on it a bit,
    find a place to give it length and breadth
Been done said she, already commented upon
    and I was stunned, really are you sure?
Been done and I pondered, is original thought
    as rapturous, if it’s been done

For surely there is rapture here for me
    in this imagining of death
    as waking from the dream of life
But I’m a reader and it’s been theorized
    that every perceived sense is cast in memory
My god, it’s made of me an architect
    of other men’s labored drawings,
    a re-kindler, blowing breath on old coals

Is nothing new, can an egg be un-scrambled,
    am I leafing idly through other men’s pages?
Reversing Vonnegut, lifting a phrase of Doctorow,
    to slide it between the slices of my sandwich?
I reject that, for who would paint, having seen Picasso
    or sculpt in the same world as the Pieta?
It’s a damned good thought, this view of death
    and I may work on it yet, but still . . .
Poetry Collection: The Smell of Tweed and Tobacco
This poem is included in
Jim Freeman's
poetry collection

THE SMELL OF TWEED
AND TOBACCO

available here in print
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