Sometimes I feel a poem doesn't quite hit the mark. I work it and re-work it and often  just let it go - put it out there. In it's original form this was a poem that started off as two separate poems which I then merged. I had at least 20 stanzas to choose from and experimented with changing them around and cutting up couplets. This revision of For A Second I Forgot, I think gets to the core of those "moments of being" to borrow Virginia Woolf's term for those odd mental absences where something is realised and disappears. I might change it again because there was a good line "I'm doing well without me", which I've omitted from this.

 

I've dug out a couple of poems from 1987 and have begun the process on them. One Camera Shy, I'll put on here when it feels good enough to go, or it becomes like flogging a dead horse. For now, here's the revised poem. You can find the original on my Crackle & Drag Poetry Blog.

 

For A Second I Forgot #2

 

I counted my achievements

there were not too many,

on dismal mornings such as this

I cannot think of any.

 

The ticking of the clock,

the centre of my drama,

for a second i forgot

its arbitrary measure.

 

For a second I forgot,

in the expanding minute

my burden might be heavy

but there is nothing in it.

 

For a second it's accepted

with complete concession

the contingent and connected

empty of all mission

 

For a second there resigned

all urge and aspiration,

no weight or value was assigned

no number or ambition.

 

For a second i forgot

and there was no resitence

for a moment I was locked

within the flow of all existence