{"id":258,"date":"2012-02-10T08:55:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T08:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/?p=258"},"modified":"2012-02-10T08:56:20","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T08:56:20","slug":"moth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/2012\/02\/moth\/","title":{"rendered":"Moth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>by Gord Sellar<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">He dreamt cold fishes<br \/>\nchanting<br \/>\nfrom the other side.<br \/>\nlimped shadows, hunched<br \/>\nghosts.<br \/>\necho-circles crossing cold<br \/>\nwater, light of hidden fire.<br \/>\nsongs drift outward, blood<br \/>\ncongeals in dark pools,<br \/>\nThen he was told:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">hungry moths<br \/>\ncame to him and crawled<br \/>\ninto his belly, and spoke,<br \/>\nsang, danced air;<br \/>\nthese things lacked<br \/>\nwords only. not one<br \/>\nthing came dressed in words,<br \/>\nexcept the ending:<br \/>\n<em>Remember what you have heard,<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Remember what you have seen,<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">they pulled the cords within<br \/>\nand tugged him down<br \/>\naway from sleep.<br \/>\nthey murmured as he rose<br \/>\nas he unfurled his<br \/>\nchalky wings<br \/>\ncharging him to keep the rhythms<br \/>\nsacred.<br \/>\nthey sang the music of all spirit-things<br \/>\nbecause everything forgotten<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">is souless. he<br \/>\nmoves like whispers<br \/>\ninto dark spaces.<br \/>\nthe world is<br \/>\nendless from the ground\u2019s surface,<br \/>\nwhere he flitters, cold.<br \/>\nseeing bulb-light, he stirs<br \/>\nand moves into the arc of vision.<br \/>\nflesh on searing curve, he<br \/>\nreturns to the circling winds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 120px;\">&#8212; Saskatoon, 1996<\/p>\n<p>________<\/p>\n<p>This poem is a Glosa; the original quatrain:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Then he was told:<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Remember what you have seen,<\/em><br \/>\n<em>because everything forgotten<\/em><br \/>\n<em>returns to the circling winds.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>is attributed, rather ambiguously, to &#8220;a Navajo chant&#8221; in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.librarything.com\/work\/467702\" target=\"_blank\">a book I was once given<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Gord Sellar He dreamt cold fishes chanting from the other side. limped shadows, hunched ghosts. echo-circles crossing cold water, light of hidden fire. songs drift outward, blood congeals in dark pools, Then he was told: hungry moths came to him and crawled into his belly, and spoke, sang, danced air; these things lacked words [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems-canada"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xIep-moth","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gordsellar.com\/texts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}