93 and Final

Poem of the Day:
"Lifeboat, Wingspan" By Steve Healey
10 Mississippi


Healey's poem is of an Inception-scape, pulsing through the intricacies -- and dangerous dreadfalls -- of a dream world. He writes of "his city on the Mississippi" (line 1), in which the weather can be anticipated by the shifts in his body: "When my head feels light, it rains on Monday" (line 8). It is this line that first tells us, in explicit terms, that Healey's city is built entirely of the mind, a construct of the speaker's imagination.

My summer city was real. You can point to Boston on a map; and Cambridge; and my house, that northern tip of the Charles. My over-referred to daily grind was real -- grittily so -- as was my internship, and the numerous people I met and got to know.

At the beginning of this project, or challenge as I like to think of it, I posed the cliché "A poem a day keeps the...away," hoping that at the close of these last three months I would have a filling for this blank. And, I think I do.

"A poem a day keeps the fugue away." Although the last month or so of keeping this blog became, at times, tiresome, my days became easier to recall. Because small moments had been pulled out, and then likened to published works of poetry -- sometimes more successfully than others -- my days were sharper in my memory: a new, more state-of-the-art summer lens.

The final line of Healey's poem is "I'm ready for the pluvial air" (line 37). It follows a violent dissipation of his self-created (inflicted?) dream world ("When I deny having a sister, the sun/burns her skin") and serves as a final release for all of the pent-up (literally, mind-sequestered) images that make up the piece.

"I'm ready for the pluvial air."

Well, I'm ready for the blogless air.

For the time being, at least.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey