Recording

First the poem, then my commentary:

Recording

For the first time, lips to the lattice of a microphone, I am speaking

about the summer rainstorm I saw in negative – black tracing

the edges of a white maple, towering and holy like Yggdrasil.

It glowed for an instant, burned like a crackling pillar of fire,

then split apart under the weight of heaven. A witness,

I fell, as if my legs had vanished beneath me, while in reverence

my hair stood at every corner. Thor, it appeared, had stomped through

my backyard, on his way to the field of Vigrid – on to death

and the end of old gods, the incineration of nature, and on to rebirth.

The developed photo of memory left behind is a splintered stump

and the footprint of a giant, though my father reminds me

that the tree-trunk lay there, before he dragged it away.

I stop speaking and play it back to make sure it’s right. I fine-tune

my words. I re-record the story; I change the vocal effects, but I know

it’s no good. I can’t get the voice to quiver like my childhood.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In my poetry class, we often listen to a recording of the poet reading his/her poem and so today I thought to myself - I'd like to try doing that with one of my poems. So I used Garageband to record an older poem of mine "The King of Fury", but I noticed, as usual, that I don't sound like myself when recorded (although I'm sure everyone hears me like that (I just don't hear me like that, so it's weird)). And then I began to try to write a poem about it, but I didn't want to repeat the poem I was recording so I twisted the actual experience and made it into something I've never actually experienced - seeing a tree struck by lightning was what I was trying to capture, though some of the details may be incorrect.

So in a sense, I meant to write one poem and may have ended up writing two - one poem about recording and a whole 'nother poem about a non-existent, but still interesting (to me, at least) experience that includes Norse mythology. Should I cut out the stuff about recording and separate the poems or does it work well together? What do you think? Is the poem any good anyway? I just wrote it, but I like some of the stuff in it. Hope you enjoy it too.