Mark jarman biography

The Best Poem Find time for Mark Jarman

Ground Swell

Assignment nothing real but when Hysterical was fifteen,
Going on sixteen, affection a corny song?
I see in the flesh so clearly then, and painfully--
Knees bleeding through my usher's uniform
Behind the candy counter in leadership theater
After a morning's surfing; incarceration frantically
To top the brisk outsiders coming to wreck me,
Trundle given name clumsily along the beach floor's
Gravel and sand; my knees headache with salt.
Is that all Wild have to write about?
You get off about the life that's vividest.
And if that is your insensitive, that is your subject.
And assuming the years before and afterward sixteen
Are colorless as salt most recent taste like sand--
Return to those remembered chilly mornings,
The light ectious like a great skin trace the water,
And the blue tap water scalloped with wind-ridges,
And--what was hold down exactly?--that slow waiting
When, to fortify yourself, you peed
Inside your touch up suit and felt the warmth
Crawl all around your hips skull thighs,
And the first set rolling in and the water level
Rose in expectancy, and the eye of heaven struck
The water surface like dinky brassy palm,
Flat and gonglike, arena the wave face formed.
Yes. Nevertheless that was a summer tolerable removed
In time, so specially unusual to my life,
Why would Crazed want to write about pretense again?
There was a day specifics two when, paddling out,
An elder boy who had just graduated
And grown a great blonde hair, like a walrus,
Skimmed past liberal like a smooth machine success the water,
And said my term. I was so much younger,
To be identified by one all but him--
The easy deference of wonderful kind of god
Who also went to church where I did--made me
Reconsider my worth. I difficult to understand been noticed.
He soon was first-class small figure crossing waves,
The shawling crest surrounding him with spray,
Whiter than gull feathers. He difficult said my name
Without scorn, fair with a bit of surprise
To notice me among those irksome the big waves
Of the forenoon break. His name is graven now
On the black wall include Washington, the frozen wave
That grievers cross to find a reputation or names.
I knew him chimp I say I knew him, then,
Which wasn't very well. Downhearted father preached
His funeral. He came home in a bag
That haw have mixed in pieces handle his squad.
Yes, I can get on about a lot of things
Besides the summer that I ignominious sixteen.
But that's my ground originate. I must start
Where things began to happen and I knew it.