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my Self lies there covered
J. Scott Smith
my Self lies there covered
with daisies and the sort
the Mother's carpet over me
her foundation beneath. then
my Eyes see from another view
and my Mind lays a different trek, when
my Self lies there covered
In an e. e. cummings moment, I renounced the practices of mere mortals and ascended to the higher plane of aberrant capitalization and punctuation. Isn't it cool the way I capitalize only a few key words? And the way I eschew any form or meter or rhyme, isn't that clever?
Yeah, sure it is.
As originally written, the "when" at the end of the sixth line was the first word of the seventh line. Somewhere along the way, after several readings, it occurred to me I should have the first and last lines identical. That required the relocation of the "when" and (gasp!) the addition of a comma. As if the period in the fourth line wasn't heresy enough!
Here's the orginally published form:
my Self lies there covered
with daisies and the sort
the Mother's carpet over me
her foundation beneath. then
my Eyes see from another view
and my Mind lays a different trek
when my Self lies there covered
An early draft structured it like this:
my Self lies there covered with daisies and the sort
the Mother's carpet over me her foundation beneath
then my Eyes see from another view and my Mind lays a different trek
when my Self lies there covered
Aside from all that, this is about contemplating one's own death and the effect that has on how one views one's life.
[jss, November 2011]
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