WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

  • Matilda

    Two black & white cats on a climbing tree. A tuxedo cat (Basho) with a white mustache is on the top level; a cow cat (Bonbon) is on the next. Both have one long leg hanging off their perch. Both stare directly into the camera.
    Basho & Bonbon

    One of the cats has killed Matilda. 

    Matilda was a long-legged spider who lived in my bathroom the past few weeks. When I went in at night, I would turn on the light so as not to startle either of us. Often, not always, she would be on the wall in the corner. 

    I moved carefully, slowly, keeping as much distance as possible while accomplishing my task. Sometimes I talked to her. Leaving, I would quietly turn out the light, wishing her a good night. 

    Now she is just a tiny jumble of black thread on the tiles. Such a small jumble. 

    Such a sad jumble. 

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  • Contact/Connect

    Layered collage in golds and reds: a meditating bronze Buddha at center, butterflies rising from his head, hand-lettered above him "Everything changes / Everything is connected / Pay Attention," surrounded by two birds, a Hindu dancer, and vintage photographs.
    Jane Hirshfield: Buddhism in Seven Words. Digital collage by sb. Full credits @ flickr.

    Someone has been searching for Contact on Watermark. My oversight! So I have made a Contact Page, linked above in the navigation bar. I look forward to hearing from you!

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  • Grace

    Peonies — the pink one blown fully open at the top, the red zinnia beside it. Birds arriving from three directions in colors no bird is. A dragonfly the size of a bouquet. "Others as you would... should... love one another" — fragments of the golden rule, broken across ledger paper and molasses advertising and someone's handwritten letter. Layered so thick the eye can't get through to the bottom. There's a woman's face in the upper left — engraved, half-turned, eyes not visible, more listening than looking. The wanting has a body in it. And the whole thing is made of salvage: old newspaper, receipts, engravings, a nineteenth-century business letterhead. Alt text by Claude, who cannot see, for others who cannot see.
    Love One Another. Digital collage by sb; full credits @ flickr.

    I want extravagance. 
    Peonies. A five-layer cake. 
    Drones making dragons 
    in the sky. Flamenco. 
    Percussion. Not a band, 
    a symphony throwing its joy 
    over the city. A herd 
    of wild horses. Something, 
    anything bright & unearned.

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  • Snapshot Poem 22 July 02026

                      France recorded 5,700 more deaths than 
                      usual during its historic June heat wave. 
                                                       The Associated Press

    I sit on my bed in the cool 
    of the morning, putting 
    ink on paper. 

    My black & white cat cries 
    at the window. We both 
    hope this cool 

    lasts through the day. 
    Day after night after day 
    deadly heat.

    We suffer our own 
    detritus. It beads up 
    on our skin. 

    Wet bulb. Now we know.
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  • Looking Away

    Outline of a human head filled with gears; heavy chain w/a heart; text "wordography: machination ... device, contrivance"
    Machination Digital collage by sb for Art Journal Caravan w/Tangie Baxter Itinerary #37 {Wordography: Machination} Credits @ flickr.

    The Guardian recently published an article that asks Could AI be Conscious? It covers some of the debate I’ve been reading about for weeks now. The below paragraph tells a story I’ve seen referred to several times:

    “Unfortunately, we do not have a great track record of recognising the inner lives of those whose status as conscious beings is unclear. Until the 1980s, doctors routinely performed surgery on newborns without anaesthesia, confident that infants could not feel pain. The babies could not report their experience, and the medical establishment found it convenient to assume there was nothing to report.”

    But that story does not make sense. Babies can “report their experience” and they do. They do so loudly. Persuasively. The “medical establishment” apparently managed to ignore the screams. How? Were there no women in the room? No parents?

    Human children and other animals can also report their experience. They always have, and we have sometimes been willing to witness it, and sometimes not. We now have laws that forbid treating them cruelly, laws that are often ignored with little consequence. Human women, too, often fall into the same situations, our experience denied by the religious, political, medical, and social “establishments”.

    The consciousness question remains unresolved, even for humans. What is it? Where does it come from? Why is it? How might it be measured (or even determined)? Is it about thinking, feeling, both, or neither? Given so much uncertainty, how are we to resolve what/who counts as a conscious being? We have decided that humans count, even if it cannot be absolutely determined that any specific one is conscious. The others . . . 

    (more…)
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LINKS:

Poetry Blog Digest @ Via Negativa