Another Goodbye
Look: my windblown self, laid open,
or, another insolent word
like the wing of that crested bird
rephrased and tossed aside, broken.
This hill is a rocky ocean
of thorn and desire, absurd
in winter’s glaze, another slurred
and curtained morning forgotten.
Now lost habitats surround me.
Dead brush and loose skin drape my nights.
Remember, what is past, has passed.
The kettle whistles. I pour tea,
think of who I was. Oh, the delights
of leaving: nothing ever lasts.
* * *
“Another Goodbye” first appeared in Grand Little Things, a publication that “embraces versification, lyricism, and formal poetry,” in July 2020.
Thank you, editor Patrick Key, for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 
That second stanza!!! Love the music in this poem!
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Thanks, Lynne! The poem is the second in a Crown of sonnets (the 7-poem version, not the heroic crown). I penned six of them in April/May 2019, and hadn’t returned to them until today. It’s a little challenging to get back to that place and mindset, because so much has changed since then. But I’m trying!
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Here’s the first one in the crown: https://nightheronbarks.com/winter-2021/robert-okaji/
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Ooh, love this too! Chapbook material?
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Who knows? I’d forgotten about these, and haven’t been sending out the unpublished ones. Guess I’ll start there. 🙂
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Here’s the 4th one (the last of the published pieces of the crown): https://robertokaji.com/2021/08/20/flinch/
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Another good one! This is “my” kind of poetry- compressed and lyrical😊
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The form forces compression, and also takes me to places I’d not otherwise have found.
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That’s the joy of it (and sweat Lol)! I look forward to reading the rest one day😊
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I’ve completed a rough draft of the 7th and final poem, but it’s in need of work. Now it needs to marinate. I just have to remember to get back to it sometime this decade. 🙂
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Love that word – marinate! You will, Bob👍✍️
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What a treat reading this Lynne-Robert exchange – a crown of seven seems quite an undertaking, but looking forward to 7th materializing. As you say in this #2, “the delights / of leaving: nothing ever lasts” – #7’s incubation is both leaving (for a while) and destined-to-not-last.
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I may attempt another crown of 7 at some point. I do love the sonnet form.
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