Irretrievable
How we grieve the simplest
truth: we are
the scatterings,
relics of
the mind’s
erosions,
less than the sum
of our bodies. I cannot see
the word
but it smokes like
the color green
burning, but not of
flame, and once
the knife enters
you must avoid
its secretion
and peel the flesh
to reveal
what hides within:
the stem’s
purchase, pith,
seeds,
the irretrievable
shape
of a word
my lips cannot
form.
***
“Irretrievable” first appeared in a slightly different form in Vayavya, in December 2013, and subsequently appeared here in April 2016..
O at the Edges 
Amazing Robert!
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Thank you, Susan.
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Wonderful piece, lost a loved one to Alzheimer’s… it brought me there, intended or not. 🙂 All the best!
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Thanks, Anthony. It is an insidious disease.
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This is beautiful. Great poem… Spoke right to me.
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I’m so pleased it resonated for you. Thank you.
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And sometimes peeling back our thoughts is just like that, daring us to touch further, wary of the consequences.
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It is, indeed. Getting to the pith of things can certainly reveal more than we expect.
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I’m enchanted by the statue photo, eroded, haunted, seeking a lost word on a stone scroll. So right for the poem.
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That photo found me. I certainly wasn’t looking for it, but when I saw it, I knew it was the right one!
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Synchronicity? Reading this about 10 minutes past a semantics snafu – communication scrambled in the conflict between “missed” and “abandoned”; emotions also scrambled. Perhaps would’ve been better with no word at all!
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Ooh, I know that feeling all too well!
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Beautiful poem, very poignant!
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Thanks, Daniel. It has taken on new meaning for me in the past few years.
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