A line cast, a hope followedSunday, October 31, 2004
Several days have passed since I shared this question: "Which of the five senses do you think is most important?"
I have very much enjoyed reading the comments and blog posts that have surfaced looking at this, and wanted to share those I've come across and thank those who've commented here and elsewhere for making blogging so facinating. Each answer has taken its own unique spin, and as any good topic should it seems to have it's own life now in the blogsphere, as readers of these blogs continue the thread beyond the neighborhoods I haunt.
Sound: "Strings scurrying in counterpoint, a sudden whack of what must be a massive drum, then (as if from the top of a canopy of trees) the wondrous spreading tone of a flugelhorn, followed by a quartet of flutes nipping around the edges of that sound."
Sight:"I remember walking through a book-lined living-room to the front door, when I was leaving. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls, thousands of books, and not one that he could read."
Touch: "the skin is the bodies largest organ. There is a reason for this."
An Anatomy of Senses:
Yesterday morning, from the trees
up on the ridge, a cacophony of rusty hinges.
Startled by something, it stills, turns
into an immense rustle of wings.
A thousand blackbirds lift, pivot,
drift high across the field like
a cloud of smoke.
This morning, walking through the fog
on top of the same ridge, I am stopped
by a yellow sugar maple leaf
dangling from an invisible strand of silk
six feet off the ground.
The slight breeze is enough to make it
flip, flop, fly. The forest drips.
These are not metaphors for anything.
Science says, a body at rest,
a body in motion. But only
such abstract bodies really make sense.
Ah, unreal body, home to an unreal sense!
Move one finger and the universe shifts: try it.
Let the small hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
I have very much enjoyed reading the comments and blog posts that have surfaced looking at this, and wanted to share those I've come across and thank those who've commented here and elsewhere for making blogging so facinating. Each answer has taken its own unique spin, and as any good topic should it seems to have it's own life now in the blogsphere, as readers of these blogs continue the thread beyond the neighborhoods I haunt.
Sound: "Strings scurrying in counterpoint, a sudden whack of what must be a massive drum, then (as if from the top of a canopy of trees) the wondrous spreading tone of a flugelhorn, followed by a quartet of flutes nipping around the edges of that sound."
Sight:"I remember walking through a book-lined living-room to the front door, when I was leaving. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls, thousands of books, and not one that he could read."
Touch: "the skin is the bodies largest organ. There is a reason for this."
An Anatomy of Senses:
Yesterday morning, from the trees
up on the ridge, a cacophony of rusty hinges.
Startled by something, it stills, turns
into an immense rustle of wings.
A thousand blackbirds lift, pivot,
drift high across the field like
a cloud of smoke.
This morning, walking through the fog
on top of the same ridge, I am stopped
by a yellow sugar maple leaf
dangling from an invisible strand of silk
six feet off the ground.
The slight breeze is enough to make it
flip, flop, fly. The forest drips.
These are not metaphors for anything.
Science says, a body at rest,
a body in motion. But only
such abstract bodies really make sense.
Ah, unreal body, home to an unreal sense!
Move one finger and the universe shifts: try it.
Let the small hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
