"Ice-Diving in Hudson Bay"

ICE-DIVING IN HUDSON BAY

When we dive down in those cool and crystal
Blue waters, clumsy with our double wetsuits,
Steel tanks, and that thirteen feet of frozen sea,
Will we worry whether the ropes rub raw
On the rough-edged ice--safety-lines snapping,
Drifting from the ice-hole as we lose our way?
Perhaps, as we dive, swimming along stiff walls,
Sea-carved corridors, chill labyrinths of ice,
Our lamps might dim, or die, leaving us to grope
Blindly in that deep and dark, sightless world?
Will we wonder, what if--while we blindly swim--
The ice-hole freezes over, trapping us
Forever until the slow spring thaw?

Or will we be just like that Captain Hudson
And his young son, boating out on those quiet waters
Of the new-found bay, watching their tall ship sail
Beyond winter's ice.  A grim Captain-Boatswain yells
Hasty farewells from the fleeing crosstrees.
Winds bring their cries across cold, shifting seas.

--Matthew Duckworth

A fragment, a figment, from my youth.  Winter 1980: Poetry-Writing with Carl Dennis.
Undergraduate work here that I'm enjoying with hindsight.

Keith, my buddy Keith, was my partner in imagination, diving beneath the ice.
Fare well, rest well, strive well, my friend.
I miss you.

--MD

The Winding and Unwinding

THE WINDING AND UNWINDING

The shape of your thought
Entices me
Quite as much as
The thought of your shape.

Clay-minded,
Bloody-brained,
Fickle as a stick in water:
I swim towards you.

I reach for you
Again and again and again
In thought, in force,
Not withholding aught
Save what wyrd demands
From each of us.

The winding and unwinding
Of time and tide,
Again releasing,
Again embracing,
Tasting and chasing,
Like river-otters sliding
Down the sloped bank.

The winding and unwinding
Of time and tide:
The rounded lift and heft,
The nipple’s assertion,
The twinned-blood rising
Like the swift pull
Of the river’s pulse
And penetration --
Flowing,
Falling,
Following –-

That shared current
Streaming just past the shore,
Stranding us between
Just enough
And quite enough.
___

Coda:
Laughing lips sip --
Swallow -- another draft.
Glasses, glances,
Clash and chime,
Toasting the new year.

Harken to the hearty
Admonition:
Draft, not drift.

--Matthew Duckworth

Laws of Life

LAWS OF LIFE

Stone bruises;
Clay forgives.
Yet stone holds,
While clay slips.

Fire cleanses;
Fire burns;
Fire demands;
Fire yearns.

Under fierce fire
Clay becomes stone.

--Matt Duckworth

9/19/15

Rough Drafts For Laughs

Wailing mermaid: rough draft / clay play.

Salvage: Fisherman's Blues

I'd meant to do something else--what else, I can't recall--with that basic form, but the clay dried more quickly than I'd expected, dried before I could continue shaping and trimming. I slapped on the blue just to see, and later I thought, "A boat." Okay, what will help that image, that imposition, that fiction?

Telling stories with clay. No claims for mastery or masterpieces. Process; practice; pretense in the best sense.

I like it on the wall, but I wouldn't call it good. I'm posting it here as a model of fun, as a prototype for further exploration, as a bulwark against hubris.

Salvage Work: Sculpture mix, blue slip. clear glaze; copper wire; twine; a twig.

P.S. Fisherman's Blues, by the Waterboys, is a great album, particularly the title composition.