CM Burroughs
I drafted the original poem in 2018, but it had two subjects going and wasn’t whole. A fair bit later, after wanting more from the poem and having distance from it, I began revising it in the Spring of 2019.
The handwritten draft has more going for it. The repetition of the initial phrasing is something I do when writing by hand; after I conjure a line that has energy, I rewrite, refine, and extend it until I’ve got enough bones to transfer writing to the computer. In this case, I had the concept in mind and took turns at phrasing until I had the start I desired. The poem had aim, and that’s how wayfinding goes—I bumped into walls, or, more accurately, into disappointing language and directions of thought until I had the material to make the poem better.
Ultimately, after a great deal of tinkering, the poem found its precise focus, it aboutness, and its necessary form. I know I’m giving the poem agency there, but sometimes my poems know more than I do; chasing that knowledge takes time and work.
< draft 1 >
supposition
for my mother
Split the pole if you weren’t reared to know
what bridle it brandishes, if you weren’t
mindful when your shadow
loped starkly on one side and your companion’s
on the other.
Better to re-stitch your route (yes—
wholly) to the dividing pine and right
your path than to risk it.
Take the other
side around.
Someone once told me the Other was
overdone. He wasn’t Other but
must’ve gotten tired
of us being pointed out to him
or tired of long-blooded
power cutting his pallor.
Must not have known
the anxiety of belief or how
evil might put its eye on you. Must
never have known a veil.
If I split the pole, I go back because you
never know, go back for the hell of it and
because I honor my mother and my mother’s
mother in choosing, and because love
waits on the other side.
< DRAFT 2 >
< final draft >
supposition
for my mother
Let us admit there has been division enough; our teeth, its simplest
actors.
Let us admit
the past—our translucent bodies’ betrayal: good natures’ good
windows.
We were, weren’t we, moveable?
Series of solid matters sected.
Mid-life and mothered, historical warnings hum, “Don’t split the
pole—”
so as not to forget oneself so as not to be beguiled by the
menagerie present.
For any seer, bisection percusses elemental:
tension then yoke attention
to see oneself and one’s companion starkly on this side of the
divining pine.
If you split the pole,
better to graft your error, better
to right your route than to risk
misfortune’s unrelenting map. For your mother and her mother…
and hers. For the lot of us, the clot of us regarding
the unsteady water, unsteady water in
familial gourds at our feet.