AUTISM: A POEM

This blog has been created as an open experiment of poetry composition, perhaps a glimpse at an emerging manuscript as it matures. This working manuscript should not be considered as complete or published. Instead, this should be viewed as merely an early stage in the process of creation.

I have placed below some of the pages from an isolated venture in one of my typescript loose-leaf folders. The contents here represent portions of an ongoing personal project with a particularly narrow focus intended to eventually develop toward a book-length poetry sequence with the tentative working title of Autism.

The poem will grow as new sections are added. The individual posts are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and similar language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections of the long poem.

Readers are asked to regard this piece as a work in progress, a partial or rough draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various edits, emendations, or expansion may be made to the posts at any time in the future. Moreover, at some point the entire sequence will be removed to undergo a complete revision.

Therefore, I urge visitors to become followers of the blog by clicking the link in the sidebar, as well as to follow on Twitter for updates. Readers are also invited to browse my personal web site for additional information.

Indeed, a significant part of this experiment involves a certain amount of transparency that includes the possibility for readers to communicate responses and offer constructive suggestions, both of which I welcome through post comments or e-mail messages.

Also, I advise that the order of the numbered sections is not meant to be at all definitive since the long poem’s sequence will certainly be reorganized as the work in this temporary format starts to resemble a completed manuscript and begins to assume a more formal shape that might eventually be suitable for publication. In fact, I welcome interest from book publishers as well.

Thank you for taking the time to examine this trial stage, a test which I perceive as a preliminary process in the composition of a possible poetry manuscript. —Edward Byrne

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

AUTISM: A POEM


. . . . .XXII. Balloon Launch

My wife, my son, and I
. . . . .watch two dozen balloons launched

from the middle of a mud-filled
. . . . .meadow, each one rising like another

colorful sun suddenly added
. . . . .to the wide morning sky, shining

in bright reflection as it drifts
. . . . .into a slant of dawn light, reaches

toward farmland farther east.
. . . . .Every year we come here, hoping

to notice once more how
. . . . .these large objects float so easily

with even the slightest breeze,
. . . . .moving smoothly through the blue

fields above us, now cruising
. . . . .the wind current as quietly as those

final few scraps of clouds
. . . . .forging higher overhead, nothing

more than decorative remnants
. . . . .left over from yesterday’s storm.
Posted by Edward Byrne at 8:44 AM

2 comments:

  1. MaureenSeptember 15, 2010 at 10:18 AM

    I read your wife's post first. She writes wonderfully of Alex's delight in seeing and counting the balloons.

    I like how your poem moves, carrying our eyes always upward, to imagine not just the balloons in "blue fields" but also to see beyond. The lines that stay with me: "... those / final few scraps of clouds/ forging higher overhead, nothing / more than decorative remnants/ left over from yesterday's storm". They seem to echo the rising and gradual disappearance of the colorful balloons themselves.

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  2. daltonsbriefsSeptember 15, 2010 at 10:50 AM

    "decorative remnants of yesterday's storm" a fitting lesson for life in general. Viewing the storms of yesterday from the perspective of today's beauty. Thanks

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