Bowls, Emptied
I picture them always separate, unfilled, never nested among the others.
In descending order: yellow, green, red. The missing blue.
Concave, hollow, hemispherical, freed of conscience.
Other images – the skies, denser with age.
You stirring with a wooden spoon, cigarette smoldering nearby.
Or the itinerant smell of new sod and wet soil.
My knee aches whenever I traverse stairs or turn quickly.
Which holds more grief, these vessels or memory’s lapse?
Inverted, their capacity remains constant as the heavens, dark or light.
The paling dome, a memory of freshly pulled onion.
Squatting, you would patiently pluck weeds.
I bite my tongue and kneel to place the flowers.
Near this stone, where the crickets chirr and dew worms burrow.
By this mound and these blades of near-silent grass.
Where I accept this moment’s offering. And you do not.
It’s hard to hit “like” for this one, Robert, because the last line leaves one with such a feeling of melancholy. Painfully appropriate to the contemplations of a cold winter day. But it’s beautiful. I especially like the music of this phrase: “where the crickets chirr and dew worms burrow.”
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Thanks, Nadia. It is a rather melancholy poem, one in a series exploring that feeling, among others. I’m very pleased you liked that phrase. It appeared in the last revision, a few months ago.
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Don’t you love everything implicit in “it appeared”? (And maybe hate it when things don’t “appear”?)
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Yes! And I don’t know how else to explain the genesis of so many lines – they weren’t there, and then they were; they appeared. I can justify many individual words, especially as I revise so much. But lines?
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Many of Bob’s poems are unlikeable in that way.
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Fascinating, Robert 🙂
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Thank you, Kelly.
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You’re welcome! I appreciate how you tracked back to the source of what was in those bowls!
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Utterly captivating and poignant.
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Thanks very much.
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Love this piece!
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Thank you, Robin. Much appreciated.
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That was me yesterday. Beautiful yet painful write.
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Let’s hope for better tomorrows, Lisa!
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Another great one off and running on your blog. 5/5 stars!
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Thanks, as always, Daniel.
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Ah, the empty bowl. It can illustrate loss as you did so well. It can also represent the potential to now be filled again. Thanks for this lovely poem.
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I inherited my mother’s set of bowls, and use them often.
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Last five lines blew me away. When I saw the images of the bowls, before reading the poem, I was thinking in my mind what is the analogy here. Empty bowls can be filled, need not be analogous to an emptiness in heart.
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A set of ordinary bowls, missing one piece, it has occupied my thoughts for many an hour.
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Power of imagination
Finding inspiration
In objects mundane
Blossoms into
Beautiful creation
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Exactly!
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Although your words do not lead me to this conclusion, one can view the “emptied” bowls quite positively, as symbols of possibility, vessels to be filled (by the imagination or otherwise and with tangible things or intangible, inpalpable thoughts and feelings). I think it’s great that you went with “emptied,” not empty. There’s a lot that that choice says to me, too much to say here really, that makes it more poignant still (as the sudden violence and building menace, if you will, of the tongue-biting and the uprooting/plucking, the burrowing and then the ‘blades’ of grass; where you could have turned Whitman-y and perhaps even sentimental, you didn’t. Rather your diction is matter-of-fact: “And you do not.” There’s no wiggle-room there. There’s a definable, definite finality [if that makes sense] to this chain of memories.). This is the saddest dirge I’ll read all week or all month at least. Beautiful at the same time, too: you’ve done it once again, Bob.
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Thank you, Leigh. My hope was that it would be read as a “deliberate” poem, perhaps slow-moving, but carefully assembled.
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I can’t recall ever thinking any of your poems was hastily written, a cast-off or leftover, or unloved, so to speak! Definitely craftmanship at work in your poetry, but, then, you hide it well! 🙂
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Well, there are a few that I should have let rest…
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Gorgeous, Bob; heart-tugging. Favorite turn of phrase: “the itinerant smell ….”
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Thanks, Cate. There’s something affirming yet saddening in the smell of freshly turned earth.
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I like the quietness of the poem; even the crickets suggest silence to me, silence as the grass. Ummm; translate?
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Oh, yes.
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I am always so intrigued and delighted by your vivid imagery.
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You are very kind.
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I don’t know how you do this: I had to read it a few times in succession because it grabbed me and made me cry. Yes, I know it is sad. I can see that it is meant to be sad. I can’t even language what it tugged, though. A few lines of words put together and causing unexpected feeling to well in my brain. How does that even work? Sigh. I think I imagine the sadness of the speaker and feel empathy. I wonder if the voice is your own. Or just an experiment. At least I am glad to make something out of this poem. Sometimes the meaning is beyond my competence.
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Perhaps it’s the simplicity – a few declarative lines, some detail, but sufficient space for the reader to grab onto and tap into a universal feeling. I don’t usually admit to these things, but in this piece the voice is indeed mine.
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Well, maybe that is why it transmitted this way to me–because it is your own voice. Maybe to others as well.
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‘which holds more grief, these vessels or memory’s lapse?’ Empty vessels, yet so full. Of just grief? Reminds me of John O’Donohue’s poem “Presents”
I give you an emptiness,
I give you a plenitude,
unwrap them carefully –
one’s a sfragile as the other –
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Oops – meant to finish it:
and when you thank me
I’ll pretend not to notice the doubt in your voice
when you say they’re just what you wanted.
Put them on the table by your bed.
When you wake in the morning
they’ll have gone through the door of sleep
into your head. Wherever you go
they’ll go with you and
wherever you are you’ll wonder,
smiling about the fullness
you can’t add to and the emptiness
that you can fill
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Thank you. I was not familiar with the poem.
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Hi,
How interesting! A poem about a bowl. Interesting and beautiful!
GeoGee promoted my Headline Guide, and you clicked “like”. I wanted to come by to introduce myself and thank you for liking his promotion of my article.
Janice
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Thank you, Janice. I seem to read quite a few articles on how to blog better, but don’t seem to follow much advice. One of these days… 🙂
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I agree with Nadia–beautifully sad.
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Thanks very much.
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Welcome.
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