A Grateful Acknowledgement Dr. Ernest Tedlock San Marcos Press Los Cerillos, New Mexico Dr. Tedlock, my Graduate Advisor, published this poem in an edition of 52 in November 1983
duende facsimile 2013 po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043 larrygood@comcast.net
Every day is built from every dawn it goes on and on how the obstacles fall in place a new one inserts itself between a couple left over from previous days. You combat it, it takes over pushes out the time until there isn’t any left to get anything done but you do it, tired fall into bed or drop dead into night. Every day is built from the dawn whether seen or not building up around what you can do the handle of my day slips away as I drive
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I drive with both handles on the grave I work, sweat, take it write it down, cross it out organize the organized wonder about those marvelous hustlers heckling overhead are they admirable or lost in the scum of the impossible. All those published poets all that popularity! Fitting the vision to the task rather than the other way around is sane and safest. The worry of the undone accomplishments burrowing snow jobs in the head the whitewash of the impossible the gray noise of nothing let what stands stand and work the body at its hardest as long as it recoups to piece out the vision you have of the day as it is rather than what it will never be a year from now
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or the goal is not the jail the goal matures like fine wine as you dream as you do without cowtowing to it without anything at all but the quality of daily work even when it's somebody else's work you have to do some days or, god forbid, all the days let's hope not all the days are lost to your real you. I must have three in a week and struggle for those to keep those infinitely sacred untouchable as the holy of holies
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but even then something enters in as bad as my own laziness lassitude, loneliness, waste ennui into desperate depression – no work gets done the weightier mood takes over. Or simply tasks force me away from what's hot at the desk – Normal artist-duty day seems so rare so meager I must have my goal mature along with piecemeal day as I reach it inch by inch it changes into what I did today not tomorrow, ever. This is pride this is it – every day is built from every dawn moving on into place
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in the head in my head and pencil on the page moving out to whatever broadcast system exists in here in Placitas, Albuquerque here is here. I am not a catered person I am the simple funk that matures into complex time taste, rococco or not ruthless selfcriticism falling off the ledge into the heart of the valley below. A flurry of sight is it the hand patched scarf? getting to the twist of the center below well before I fall into the sack at night. The dawn comes clearer with each dawn as each dawn nears the last I'll know.
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This is my own goal done today audience participation is not denigration of them – my I is in them a select few mostly, that move in just as creative ways I, a democrat, do believe there's faith in all that is here hearing that beauty, as vain as it is is worth it it has guts and a mind of its own created with the dawn to dream at night the occasion of the next day's waking the focus of energies around its aim pleasing to the few at this quick best and transmits on from there to more if that's important in its song.
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The words strung out on a line sag in the middle unless they have wings the wings of today hovering in the egg-cocoon unraveling, singing on the thread of its own discovery thread in thread labial voice wings the throat eat oats avoid goat rocks float clouds a boat the sky dreaming elsewhere wishing it were a New Mexico sky. We do have sky and water and the impervious light that rushes out to the borders breathes over state lines welcomes others in and is impervious except to garbage –
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even if we dont have culture, that much, we have sky in the light and seek pure water to drink. That fulfills a state dream roadrunners and yucca large spaces smalltown mentality we suffer more if we do what we cant do every day. Living here is a diet, a cultural fast that we work few as we are out through, to bring true – rewards are not in heaven but the articulate appreciation solid, gut response to the dance that is best art's the doings singings on pitch or the wild risk off
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dawn comes late when you miss it if it comes at all catch on to the handle it moves up lifting yourself a rung a day or back down to ground here to stay. /17Aug80 Placitas
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original cover of bound typed manuscript