My Name is Les Dalgliesh.  I’m a singer-songwriter, living in Michigan.  I wrote poetry when I was in college, and for a while after that, but life began moving so quickly that I gave it up for twenty years or so.  For about the past year, I’ve been taking the time to write again.  I’m enjoying it.  The creative process is calming and satisfying.  The writing of songs is much more tightly structured than the writing of poems, so it’s possible to let the mind go, and to move beyond structure into pure expression.  I also post a daily blog at Myspace.com/lesdalgliesh.

If I understood Fern Canyon, (which is really why I’m posting - to find out if I did), then is the letting the mind go and moving into pure expression kind of stopping the drop on the spider web?  My first blush of understanding was stopping to smell the flowers, but then that would be you, not the drop.  I am fortunate in that Litmocracy has brought me courage in um… blathering on from the right side of my brain, by which I mean to say (because it’s reallt the left side that does all the saying, so it doesn’t understand) that the question of smelling the flowers and stopping the drop might make no sense.  But then again, it might, so I thought you might help me out.  Strong right brains tend not to be aware that they are strong, so if mine is, it could use some encouragement from someone as gifted as you.

Ok, I just read that paragraph over and I’ll leave it in here because it… um… Ok, because this is just a forum   but it seems like my left brain is micromanaging, so I’m giving up.  I just wanted to let you know (again) how much I like your poetry.  Thanks for bringing it here.

Fern Canyon is an actual place, about a half-mile from the Pacific Ocean, near Orick, California.  Interesting that you should bring up brain hemispheres, because when I’m in a place like this, or at Yosemite, or even in the hills behind my house, I shift smoothly into right brain, time stops, spacial awareness becomes nearly complete, and I am suspended, like a drop of water on a spider web.  The process is that fragile and elusive.  Thank you for your comment, and the compliment.
Les

Les Dalgliesh - 01 April 2007 04:05 PM

... I shift smoothly into right brain, time stops, spacial awareness becomes nearly complete, and I am suspended, like a drop of water on a spider web.

Me too brother.  I remember the edge of the cliffs at UCSD, overlooking the ocean.  I used to walk there, night or day and let that happen, ebracing the whole ocean and the curve of the Earth that it showed.

Thanks for the validation,
Dave.