Vigil – Poem of the Week

A poem of wakefulness – sort of

Insomnia? Stubbornness? A sort of private vigil in which one remains awake long after sleep should have come? Hard to say. But that is the subject of this week’s poem, Vigil.

This week’s poem employs irregular line indentation. It is often noted that poets have only one tool not available to the prose writer, and that is the line break. But line indentation, while something that can be employed in prose, also can get a good workout in a poem.

Think that prose doesn’t employ variable line indentation? Perhaps not to the extent that might be seen in poetry…but, consider sections of snappy, quick dialog in a story, as compared to long, dense paragraphs. They feel feel different when you read them, the lines move faster or slower, or you are carried along by the lines, or jostled from one thought to the next.

Similarly, in poetry, space, especially irregular space, tends to slow the reading down. Irregular spacing–and irregular rhythm and meter–prevent a comfortable pattern from developing. And irregular indentation and spacing can mimic the sense of the mind at work, perhaps jumping from thought to thought or returning to one thought before finishing the next, as the eye jumps from line to line. Stopping and starting, fragmentary. As opposed to long lines and less open space, which tend to carry the reader along like a swiftly moving river.

But it’s hard to properly indent in a blog post

The real problem in this post? WordPress doesn’t easily allow indentation and unusual spacing. At least, not without a fair amount of html code modification. *sigh* The web is apparently a reflowable-text-only kind of world. So I’ve used the bulleted list function instead, to at least give you the feel of the irregular indentation as it ought to look.

No river here in today’s poem, notwithstanding the canal in the background of the photo below. Ignore the bullets themselves.

Vigil

• when you sleep you can’t know
  • what happens can’t track what’s
    • needful cannot alert
  • all of the popped rivets that cause
    • a jet to crash
    • never mind you can’t see rivets
  • there’s no plane never mind digital
  • has done the analog skip
  • you can’t tell if he is alive or dead
• there’s no room on the couch
  • for anything but papers
  • packets clipped together
    • just so you cannot navigate
  • any more stairs
    • gave up sleeping
  • above before also gave up
  • treads and risers
  • it’s hard to read
• when there’s maybe
  • just three hours or so
    • if you’re asleep
      • which is as good as dead
  • the dead can’t control
    • the remote see faded paper
  • surrounding bright spaces
    • where missing photos
  • can’t read the wind or warn
    • that it’s raining
    • somewhere or be any
  • what help anymore
• if you remain
  • insist awake
  • you avoid
  • what happens without you
  • it’s ok
    • you can simulate
    • sleep sitting up
      • almost coherent
  • but inexpertly
    • you can simulate it
  • simulate it
• you can simulate it
  • when lit brightly
    • burns the harsh tunnel
      • all too hurtle down

If you enjoyed Vigil

You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.  

Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.