Steve Cahill's No Disclaimer

Steve Cahill at Whirligig in St. Johnsbury, autumn 2023
 [photo by Scott Norman Rosenthal]


NO DISCLAIMERS

One of the rules of the Barton poets is to make no disclaimers no tedious explanations, no long-winded stories of the origins of the poem, its provenance and lineage, its conception and conceits, because all of that prefacing chatter is a thinly disguised defense. Make no self deprecating little asides about form being clever Or about managing to sneak in a line that ended with forever No, let’s have none of that. Let’s just stand up and shut up and read the poem aloud. Let it stand on its own merits—use words with weight and gravitas, heavy words like Eternity and Infinity plugged in along the way so they will add substance to the poem. As for writing to a prompt—yes, yes, we have them—the one for today is ‘Eternity’ but we are not required to write about them so can go down any rabbit hole we like which makes a loosey-goosey escape clause out of the poetry business and we can write about anything we want. Or nothing. Which turns out to be the case here. You will remember that I made no disclaimers and embedded the prompt, Eternity, carefully in line three of verse three and so have more than fulfilled any obligations to the poetry group and their rules making me free to go off and write whatever the hell I please: so here’s a haiku all about eternity which lasts forever Which, if true, means that something exists that has no beginning and, for that matter, has nothing at the other end either so where did it come from? Like who made it? And why? Who holds the patent? And is there any possible way to prove that something can be endless? I thought not. So now I’m left with the task of nailing down a poem that began with no disclaimers or defense and I plan to leave it the same way because it’s a poem about finding a destination that does not exist and everything I nail down comes loose at the other end but there isn’t one.