the poem I would like to write
has lines so long it can’t fit on the page
can’t fit in books libraries must be written
on highways instead across open fields
along the vertebrae of railroad tracks
down intricate edges of coastlines river banks
tectonic plates over imaginary boundaries
of cities counties provinces whole countries
written in the Morse code of smiles nods
a million unnamed gestures even DNA itself
the first poem winding and splitting from generation
to generation with almost perfect memory a sky poem
a poem traced by planets in their orbits by moons
comets asteroids our solar system inching its way
through a dusty prong of the galaxy big bang poem
poem of dark matter cosmic background radiation
entropy quarks a poem too big for words that breaks
spontaneously into prefixes suffixes vowels
random syllables then incoherent grunts and howls
whistles honks sputtering and ultimately silence
the purest expression and taking us with it
every thought every feeling every dream
poem of motion currents pulses fields
breath poem time poem a poem unending
all energy all stillness beyond keeping
Harry Newman’s plays and poetry often involve questions of justice and the effects of power on individuals and society. His collection, Led from a Distance, is published by Louisiana Literature Press. Newman’s plays include The Occupation, Dry Time — written in the early 1990s and likely the first climate change related play — The Dark, and a translation of Patrick Süskind’s The Double Bass. They have been workshopped and produced at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, the Public Theater in New York, the Cincinnati Playhouse, the Guggenheim Works & Progress series, the Segal Theatre Center, and many other theaters across the U.S., as well as in Germany. My Long Poem was originally published in Chautauqua, Volume 11.
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