Rock and Wind: The Unfinished Verse

The illustrated manuscript I sent to my graphic designer was sent with three incomplete poems at the end of it. I did not know that they were there. I thought that I had erased them because I was stumped about how they should be finished. But my friend who was compiling the illustrations and text thought that the unfinished verse was off to a good start and urged me to continue work on them.

Two of the three verses were initially not the last of the poems but the first. They were meant to accompany illustrations (also incomplete) that were based upon paintings that I had made a long time ago and had discarded. I had some regrets about disposing of these and had thought to make some drawings of them but never did.

The poem, "Rock and Wind" took me about three days to finish writing, as I had devoted myself to writing funny little rhymes for the last two years and set aside my "more serious" free verse. Yet I finished the free verse and added it to my collection. The drawing, pictured above, took much less effort as it was patterned upon an earlier work. It was not as linear as the other illustrations in my collection but for now she is still included.

　

Rock, Wind

Woman of earth
Seated as a rock
spun a cyclone in her arms
whipping air into a windy spiral
of a tornado that never quite touched down

Histrionic whirling of her upper limbs
stirred the currents of the atmosphere
and beat a pathway across the heavens
a passage that coursed intently downward
ending abruptly on stationary ground

Woman of the air
Descended from the sky
rested as a lichen covered boulder
cold stone against the blue horizon
unmoving yet growing in strength
static against the swirling of her dervish torso

Rocks strewn like Jurassic eggs
punctuated the land upon which she sat
feet folded beneath her hips of stone
carved from gusts of unending wind
and shaped by the currents of ceaseless waters
-Janet Kozachek 2015