votary

Today's word is

votary

Wow.  I don't think I've ever used this word in my entire life, even having read it elsewhere.  It feels awkward in my mind, as I'm more likely to use other words to express the same concept.  It's like trying to fit a rough pebble into a slot I'd normally fill with a smooth bearing.

Hmmm...  This will take some thought.

*****
Tuesday, 11:59 p.m., just under the wire:

Votaries of the morning ritual,
we stream along the road
stately as zombies
who know their mission
on a cellular level.

We gather to celebrate
the marriage of deftly handled
butter pastry with tangy cream
and sweet syrup.

We gather as testament to the
new life we are given each dawn
by conversion of the brown bean
into thin, transparent
nectar.

We rejoice as the sun rises,
as our eyes clear,
fragrant steam caresses our nostrils,
golden crumbs fleck our lips,
and our minds slowly turn
toward the light.

And then we board our vehicles,
stream off toward the city,
starting and stopping and belching fumes,
and cursing each other for being
in the way.

Comments

[moose]

Notre Dame de Paris

Streaming beams of light cut through your
Interior, softly shining shafts that cleave
All darkness. The cold air hangs still and high.
I have seldom felt so small.

Your vast reaches make me feel I could lose myself
There or in the joyous brilliance of your singing roses.

My eyes reach up and out along your
Celestial arches, following the graceful, knowing curves,
Led by lines where we are meant to go.
They built you out of cold stone but made you fly.

Down the cavernous side aisles shadowed like winter,
I enter the pools of warm light from votary candles.
They stand in circular ranks, silent voices in the dark,
Speaking their prayers to the eternal inscrutability
One by one.

[Sara]

Pretty, Moose. I like the way you painted that darkness-and-light thing that Notre Dame de Paris has. I remember being surprised at how big it was and yet how dark inside on a bright summer's day, different than others of its type, Reims cathedral for example, which seemed so light yet was also made of hand cut stone. I remember wondering if this gave people a sense of refuge and privacy, and what it must be like in winter.

[leslee]

Two vastly different views of votary here! I love the morning votaries - very funny, and so true. And Moose's reverent votary is lovely - I've been there, too - this captures it well.

[moose]

Sara, your poem's way fun! It fascinates me how people can take such different journeys springing from the same root word! I love it.

This is very good exercise for me, I think -- I struggle with my desire to go back and edit (which I can't) when I let time pass and look back at the poem and would change some things. Yesterday afternoon, for instance, was torture as I looked back at this and thought about how I could rewrite several lines. But perfection, I think, is not what this exercise is about. Refinement isn't it either. Rather it's about starting from a common point, and see where we can go -- in a necessarily brief amount of time, given that we have only the day. It is about daily flexing of poetry muscles!

[patry Francis]

I never used this word either, but after these two wonderful poems, it is imprinted in my mind forever.

[Sara]

"It fascinates me how people can take such different journeys springing from the same root word! I love it."

That's just how I feel, too! Thanks, M.

Also, though I agree that substantive revisions -- at least, to be posted here -- are kind of beside the point, if I discover a typo in my own work (a period where there should be a comma, for example), I have no issue with fixing it. Likewise, if you discover a typo in your own, I'll be happy to fix it for you; just let me know.

As for revising, while I won't substantively revise any of my own postings here (it is tempting, and I did struggle with it the first two days), I may revise my own work for use elsewhere, and naturally I would encourage you to do so for your own stuff, too, as the mood takes you. If I think the evolution is interesting, I might post the work in subsequent stages in the same post, but mostly I consider this exercise an extension of my ongoing verbal sketchbook. Sometimes sketches are good and fine all by themselves. Sometimes they form the basis for a more elaborate, formal painting. Sometimes, though, they're just doodles. :)

[moose]

I like your take on this, Sara, thanks.