[New-Poetry] purrrrrrrring all along ...

Anny Ballardini anny.ballardini at gmail.com
Mon Sep 29 08:18:02 EDT 2008


>From the Writer's Almanac:
Purring

by Coleman Barks<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,bvko,dv,9o5s,ei2w,3hrs,fxvj>

The internet says science is not sure
how cats purr, probably
a vibration of the whole larynx,
unlike what we do when we talk.

Less likely, a blood vessel
moving across the chest wall.

As a child I tried to make every cat I met
purr. That was one of the early miracles,
the stroking to perfection.

Here is something I have never heard:
a feline purrs in two conditions,
when deeply content and when
mortally wounded, to calm themselves,
readying for the death-opening.

The low frequency evidently helps
to strengthen bones and heal
damaged organs.

Say poetry is a human purr,
vessel mooring in the chest,
a closed-mouthed refuge, the feel
of a glide through dying.

One winter morning on a sunny chair,
inside this only body,
a far-off inboard motorboat
sings the empty room, urrrrrrrhhhh
          urrrrrrrhhhhh
          urrrrrrrhhhh

"Purring" by Coleman Barks from *Winter Sky: New and Selected Poems,
1968–2008*. (c) University of Georgia Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission.
(buy now<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,bvko,dv,flyf,a6c5,3hrs,fxvj>)



-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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