In Facebook is a poetry group called Poets All Call. My friend Joe posts a weekly challenge for the group. This weekend, he said he was out of ideas and invited us to write about the weather. I responded with “weather tizz no blur,” posted the poem on the group’s page, and then decided to add it to this blog, with notes following.
weather tizz no blur
wither on the vine we do
whithersoever we travel
why the whereas makes it so
waysayers try to unravel
we the thereuponned may ponder
wangle and wheedle and wage
when the river becomes absconder
wuthering highs disengage
but soft
are sheets
and sunshine’s welcomer
zenith and trough notwithstanding
when there’s cessation of storms
we shed sloth
seeking
an
outcome
outlanding.
*****
The title riffs on the “whether ’tis nobler…” phrase in Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet soliloquy. Hamlet is wondering whether or not he should fight against all his problems, or pack it in and end his life. I do have a penchant for punning–so did Shakespeare–but this pun served the additional purpose of relating Whether with Weather. Weather drives our Whethers. If it’s cold and rainy, we act differently than if it is warm and sunny. “weather tizz no blur” is a focused (no blur) look at the bottom vagaries (tizz as in Tizzy) of weather, both externally with atmospherics and internally with mood and decision.
I wanted to make the poem analogous to weather, so I made the first stanza a bit like a steady rain, with the starting sounds of each line bearing a similarity that toward the end of the stanza breaks up a bit. The challenge became the buildup of a meaningful passage, and my intuition led me to some legalese, what with “whithersoever” and “whereas” and “thereupon,” language found in contracts and proclamations, serving the dual purpose of being as droning as steady rain, and enabling specificity.
The second stanza differs from the first in the way that good weather follows bad, and the analogy disappears and becomes content, reviewing what we do when weather clears.
Friends, I hope your own inside-weather is pleasant and gently energetic, right as rain. 🙂
One with Clay, Image and Text 