Tuesday Poem mouths the alphabet into the lap of a listening hand. 

The hub poem of this Tuesday’s Tuesday Poem is The Shape of Words (desert love poem) by Odawni AJ Palmer selected by award-winning Seattle poet Therese Clear who is founder of the Floating Bridge Press. A poem about words and love and sand and finding them in the order you least expect…

And as is the way with the Tuesday Poem community there are threads -spontaneous and created - between the hub poem and the poems that are posted through the day in the live blog roll, and between the poets and poems at an individual level.

NZ poet and co-curator of the Tuesday Poem blog Claire Beynon’s poem also has the ‘desert’ in it and a search for language in that ‘desert’. She explains how she came to post it (discarding Rilke as she did) and in doing that describes some of the thrill of the Tuesday Poem to those in its community and, hopefully, beyond:

‘When I woke in the wee hours this morning, I reached for my lapdog and started reading the first few Tuesday Poems that had been posted, beginning with T. Clear's chosen poem at the TP hub - The Shape of Words (desert love poem) by Odwani AJ Palmer.

Each week's set of Tuesday poems seems to demonstrate an overarching pattern or unspoken understanding, suggesting our wider preoccupations are in synch. I find the way this expresses 'community' inspiring and comforting. Connections are made. Poems become bridges or stepping stones tossed into the oceans between North and South, East and West. Spontaneous conversations rise up.

In light of all this, I've decided to keep Rilke for another time and to post Coaxing a bridge out of the sands of a desert as originally intended.’

And in Claire’s poem we find the glorious lines:

Consider the body, loud with sound
yet it must wait in silence. Explain
the mind so dense with words
it would mouth the alphabet into the lap
of a listening hand.

And there is more of this ‘alphabet’ for listening hands in the live blog roll of 30 poets that are connected to the Tuesday Poem. Go to www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com and prepare to be amazed.

Links: ‘Tuesday Poem’ line 1:  www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com ‘Claire Beynon’s poem’ line 1, para 3: http://icelines.blogspot.com/2010/07/tuesday-poem-coaxing-bridge-out-of.html