for Richard Serra
I wasn’t there but heard that
from the bridge he slid
paints down and into,
shading the water. The middle
clarified to a tongue of alizarin
and cerulean, colors
he no longer needed.
After paints, he dropped brushes
to the dark taste of river:
filberts, flats, pointed rounds.
Monochrome water itched
with hog bristles. He was done
with mimic, with making
something look.
The days now each come
and the man eats
degrees, commits to shape
lead and plumb steel
from clearance to gap.
He continues ushering in the exit.
I have been writing
this poem for 13 years, from the first
skinny map of its spine,
the five percent
curve and superfluous floor.
I gave it a hill and a side
and the none
of this is what it wanted
to unspool: blue sky and surplus rust
or tight pitch
against the chatter of city.
When I stood still
in it which meant in St. Louis
or Manhattan or wherever I staggered
in each taper, the narrow
stuttering light and my lopsided
advances, I was betrayed
by the ground and this felt
like promise. I have so many times let
someone else in the round
where I am not
doing more than reaching self
to hard wall. I have never been in love
with stillness or center, only
peeling back to the question
of head and heart made by the physical
law of any object or person.
In the final turn
it is always as if the first time:
how to enter
already looking for the smallest light,
how to be about
to lose myself again.
Lauren Camp
Lauren Camp serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of eight books, most recently In Old Sky(Grand Canyon Conservancy, 2024). A former Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park, Camp is a recipient of the Dorset Prize, finalist commendations for the Arab American Book Award and Adrienne Rich Award, and a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, French, and Arabic. www.laurencamp.com
