Variations on a Theme
1. The Long Night
We envy the shadow its attributes, its willingness to subside,
but what of its flesh?
I lay in the field and wept.
Think of the fragrance, the moist leaves
enveloping the still
warm body. In retrospect, I realize that I should never have left, that air
returns to voided space despite all attempts to disavow
light, that wind and rain and soil alike filter through the chest’s
cavity, that stones may bear one’s touch in perpetuity.
At nineteen, death had gifted nothing to my world.
At twenty, little else remained.
So close, so lovely.
2. The Loneliness of Shadows
Light collapsing around a point. The two-headed flower.
In my dreams, no one speaks.
Not the thing itself, the bud bursting forth, petals ablaze with color,
but rather change: the process reinforced.
Sleep seldom shows such kindness.
Or its fruit, redolent of sun and rain, withdrawn and shriveled,
and finally, ingested.
Yesterday I woke damp but unafraid.
3. Alchemy
Stones never talk, but they rise from the earth, appearing as if by invitation.
The way silence lines an unfilled
grave, which is to say as below
so above, an infinite murmur open to the night.
And other notions: transpiration.
Waste.
Sublimation. Calcination and burning.
At times I have withdrawn
like water from the air’s
body, fearful yet reckless in the act.
That evening the moon flickered and the shadows lay at our feet,
and all the words we never framed,
the bitters our tongues could not know, the wasted
music and abandoned caresses, those words,
sighed into the ground, leaving you adrift, alone.
But how else might one transform darkness to light?
Or the reverse.
This originally appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April, 2014, and was first posted here in July of 2015..
This is simply stunning.
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You are so kind, Merril. Thank you.
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reassuring
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Thank you.
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Thank you for sharing
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It was my pleasure. Thank you for reading. 🙂
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Loooooong, heavy sigh.
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Thanks, Michael. This one marinated for a loooooong time. 🙂
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Better than French lentil soup served in a boule. Real good piece, Bob. Real good.
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It’s hard to beat those French lentils!
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Especially when made with love.
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In my house, lentils = love. 🙂
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Heartbreakingly beautiful, Bob. Thank you.
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Thanks, Cate!
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Reblogged this on IdealisticRebel's Daily View of Favorites and commented:
Excellent! Hugs, Barbara
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Thanks for reblogging this, Barbara.
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like the helicopter, it’s like you’re flying now : )
I can only beat that one with my Scottish Father’s favourite poem.
‘There was a coo, up on the hill. It’s no there noo. It must have shifted.’ hehe
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Ha! That would be one of my favorites, too. 🙂
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Every line a new trail of marvels and mysteries. Beautifully haunted words.
Thank you!
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You’re very generous. Thank you.
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The spirit world is a mystery with few avenues of insight, and mostly speculation.
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Speculation is rampant these days!
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Beautiful, profound words. Having worked in hospitals when much younger, I’ve taken more than one body to the morgue, people I have talked with and liked, including one young man and one child, and my mother, with whom I sat on that last day. Life, which is long, really is rather short, then ends. Thanks for sharing this.
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Thanks, George. Ephemeral life!
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i don’t quite know why but there is a sense of disembodiment, as if the theme is being deconstructed, dismantled to look inside, to figure it out. it reminds me of what Ted Hughes does with the physical poem in his book Crow, where poems start in stanzas then drift apart to broken lines as if the fabric of meaning, the reality of the poem even was coming apart.
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In its early iterations, some 12-14 years ago, the poem was highly fragmented. I received a goodly number of “what the hell?” comments, and in the end chose to “defrag” the poem, at least a bit.
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It’s works to good effect.
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Speechless before your magic aka alchemy!
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Thank you, Linda!
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You are truly gifted!
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Thank you, Annika. I’m more of a persistent stumbler, but the words occasionally fall into place. 🙂
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Lol… and you have a fine sense of humour too!
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🙂
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