Yoon Yong wakes into her final day on Jeju Island. This isn’t the last of the series, but it’s coming.
It must be the final day
…At dawn | the magpie matinee | oriole | finch | white eye |
starling | wren & sparrow shaking the air | the thick brush
& the weak light of the garden.
If someone wrote a poem about my life
I hope they’d never make me a Romantic.
Perched in a bay tree | 2 starlings | their heads pivot
like a teetotum “on its last legs.”
Their raspy eeks rattle dew from the leaves
which glaze a low wall—somebody left their washing out
tethered with shining spider webs.
Moisture & immature sun light.
Could I know myself better from this picture…?
Daniel Paul Marshall 
“This isn’t the last of the series, but it’s coming.”
I’ve said that many times, and found that the series didn’t end when I intended it to.
The poems were all written a year ago or more & I just don’t see myself entering this mise en scene of the mind again. It was a challenge for myself & there are some successes here, but I know where I want my loyalty to be now.
That’s what I said about my ‘Veronica Franco’ poems.
I suppose I’ll just have to wait & see then.
The starlings’ “raspy eeks rattl(ing) dew from the leaves” makes me think of the proverbial butterfly wing-flap causing some cataclysm halfway around the world — I appreciate your recognition of and acceptance of responsibility for the fact that from our every reflexive utterance, a measurable, tangible consequence is born.
That’s an interesting take on this line. I can’t take credit for having that in mind for this poem, it was purely expressive of my own garden in Jeju.
This series should never end… it is too good! There is too much to stir the mind/heart here to just leave Yoon Yong to float away in clouds of memory. Say it ain’t so…
Sorry pal, good things come to an end. I finished writing these well over a year ago & it was one instance where I somewhat knew what I wanted to say & had a reasonably accurate gauge on how many poems it would take & that is Yoon Yong. I’ll probably think of something akin to it at some point, fingers crossed. Still about 8 poems to go.
At least include a small paragraph of your thoughts on the series at the end. It is too good of a thing to leave without a proper send off…
That’s a good idea. I’ll give it some thought.
I feel exactly the same way. If I had time, I would trawl Dan’s archive and copy-paste all this series in a pdf so that I could just sit with them all in one place, read through them a second (third, fourth, fifth) time and savour them. That’s how good they are. They are unique. I’ve never read anything quite like them.
When I am done posting them all, I will happilu send you the document with all the poems in, if you want them all in one place for future reading.