… And you may wonder why it is I haven’t posted in a week! Artistically speakin, only three wheels on my wagon at the moment. Is it me, or are we all emotionally in something of an overblown post-prandial state? Never mind… Lent will soon be here… that will be good for the feel-good factor! K xx :))

A write inspired by John Berryman’s The Ball Poem

“THE EPISTEMOLOGY* OF LOSS”


“the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point he’s in business.” John Berryman


“The epistemology of loss”
does randomly not exist

though who has not felt its effects?

I carry on my back its invisible bag, bulging
with the accumulated unknown misplacings
and careless bloodied spillages
of a lifetime’s staggered journey,

the weight of it ratchets down
each sprocket of my spine.

In it, the irreplaceable childhood ball
that knew each tender nuzzle of joy
and every toe-cap of frustration.
It has bounced away and floated
unreachably downstream.

And its lining is the phantom
head of hair (a little girl’s precious bounty)
that only ever knew steel blades.
With it I have feathered an empty nest.

Is loss of innocence the irreparable tear,
the invisible rupture by which
all these other escapes creep in?

The yielding of the sacred self
the gateway to this burgeoning cul-de-sac
of loss that weighs so heavy,
the beginning of the circular route
that lasts so long?



*epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to
its methods and validation