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In Memoriam Mae Noblitt

A R Ammons 1926 – 2001

Nature

This is just a place:
we go around, distanced,
yearly in a star's

atmosphere, turning
daily into and out of
direct light and

slanting through the
quadrant seasons: deep
space begins at our

heels, nearly rousing
us loose: we look up
or out so high, sight's

silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves

coiled and free in airs
and oceans: water picks
up mineral shadow and

plasm into billions of
designs, frames: trees,
grains, bacteria: but

is love a reality we
made here ourselves,
and grief, did we design

that, or do these,
like currents, whine
in and out among us merely

as we arrive and go:
this is just a place:
the reality we agree with,

that agrees with us,
outbounding this, arrives
to touch, joining with

us from far away:
our home which defines
us is elsewhere but not

so far away we have
forgotten it:
this is just a place.

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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 29, 2023

: 51 sec read
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Quick analysis:

Scheme	Axx bcd xxx bxa eAf xxd cgx hfi gih xAj xxj exx xxA
Closest metre	Iambic trimeter
Characters	862
Words	171
Stanzas	13
Stanza Lengths	3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3

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johnp.68344
“..water picks
up mineral shadow and

plasm into billions of
designs, frames: trees,
grains, bacteria: but..”

PLEASE what does “mineral shadow” mean? more »
LikeReply9 months ago
johnp.68344
I just finished ‘Seven Lessons on Physics’ by Rovelli.
The last one, ‘In Closing’ has a lot of my underlinings:

(Physics) “is not as Kant imagined a priori. They are a posterior to the mental evolution of our species, and are in continuous evolution”

(We are) “immersed in this nature which made us and which directs us,
we are not homeless beings suspended between two worlds, parts of but only partly belonging to nature, with a longing for something else. No: we are home.”

Here we seem to have a lovely contradiction with end of this Ammons poem “In Memoriam…”

“…as we arrive and go:
this is just a place:
the reality we agree with,

that agrees with us,
outbounding this, arrives
to touch, joining with

us from far away:
our home which defines
us is elsewhere but not

so far away we have
forgotten it:
this is just a place.” more »
LikeReply9 months ago

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"In Memoriam Mae Noblitt" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 3 Jun 2023. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/54613/in-memoriam-mae-noblitt>.

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