Clearance
Active.
This piece is my entry for Crafting Clarity’s monthly ekphrastic challenge, by JC.
The poem responds to John La Farge’s The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti. Fisherman Spearing a Fish (c. 1895), using the image as a structural rather than descriptive anchor.
The original prompt and artwork can be found here.
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entry point aligned
timing active
sections maintenance stable
position holding
all intervals within limits
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alignment in motion
maintenance section holding
timing locked
still active
intervals stable
limits ok
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motion in progress
clearance not completed
intervals holding, still active
limits maintained
concurrent usage
position held
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intervals narrowed
clearance minimal
postion active
limit condition maintained
motion held
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motion holds
clearance continues
positions maintained
limits fixed
timing locked
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positions overlapping
concurrent timings
clearance unavoidable
shared intervals
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entry points aligned
interval limits set
maintenance sections stable
position held
motions still active
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I’m always open to thoughtful writing collaborations.
Other prose and poems.
Nothing truly leaves — it just changes how it stays.
If something moved in you — a silence that whispered — I’d love to hear it below, or in my DM’s.
All artwork courtesy of NDjin Gallery
This poem feels like a person trying to steady themselves using the language of systems, as if procedure were the only way to make sense of a world in motion.
Each stanza reads like a quiet check‑in with the self a way of asking, Am I still holding? Am I still within my limits?
The repeated words alignment, timing, clearance begin to sound like the body’s own whispered instructions for surviving pressure.
There is something deeply human in the way “motion holds” and “position maintained” echo the effort of staying grounded when life tightens around you.
The narrowing intervals and minimal clearance feel like the emotional squeeze of days when there is barely room to breathe.
Even the locked timing and fixed limits carry a quiet ache the sense of living inside constraints you didn’t choose but must navigate anyway.
The overlap of positions and shared intervals hints at the messy, unavoidable entanglements of being alive with others.
The poem’s clipped rhythm becomes a metaphor for the delicate balancing act of functioning while carrying invisible weight.
By the end, the return to alignment feels less like a technical reset and more like a small, hard‑won moment of inner steadiness.
What begins as mechanical language becomes a portrait of persistence a person continuing to move through tight spaces with as much grace as they can manage.
Oh, Mark, you are not only a writer but also a painter. I realized this today after reading this piece. Let’s also look at it from the perspective of a poet. The way you have captured the portrait is so beautiful and profound that the image comes alive before our eyes. You have transformed the portrait into concepts of structure, motion, timing, and boundaries. This shows that you could easily be a talented painter as well. Where to show color in the portrait, where to depict movement, how to balance everything...these are all qualities of a skilled painter. And the fact that you turned your artistic experiment into poetry is something only a true poet could do. On the other hand, it is clear that only a good poet can interpret any image with absolute accuracy.