Response to Jeff Roper's Improv, Week 3

There was an amaranthine oak
That had to tower fort-y feet
climb down, a small dare, fear

froze me in
time, as movement proved
impossible, persuasion,

both, from the peer
perhaps mostly,
stranger, his anger.

A-Shudder in
time. I step laboriously from
fort-branch towards, tree-branch.

The moment, the body
leaving surfaces, knows
its falling

into the air, still it
fumbles for grounding
wrestling space.

I have thought, since, of
how foolish—and I know now
to resist it, was futile yet

stepping, on air
upon air, I hoped on
that impossible and last wish

of finding a branch along
the way, to sustain me.
I will die, and I cannot

rest on how it’s possible,
not possible, so
young-minds, trust, scramble

stupidly. Not the soul
to think on now, unnatural
prayer, which is for life.

For with age comes wisdom,
a true sense of time,
but youth believes, amaranthine.

The improvisation seems to function as a reminiscence of a childhood memory that shifts between the perspective of the child to the perspective of an adult. What I found interesting about this piece was the response to it after Jeff wrote it. The shift from adolescence to adulthood could be an interesting way to create a juggling act in this draft as the memory of the speaker and the actually thoughts of the child could mingle with each other, creating a kind of liminal space from what is actually occurring to what the speaker remembers of the event. Doing so could create an interesting juggling act between the two which could then be combined and blurred near the end of the poem. Also, some the language could be expanded through showing the abstractions in the work, instead of telling with such words as "fear froze me,"impossible," "persuasion," and perhaps the idea of futility could be expanded as well.