Sat, 20 December 2008
(The pic above is actually my parking lot with a gorgeous sunset. This poem is a Sestina. This is one of a triptych--three sestinas in this case that go together....)
BALANCE It's easier to escape into a dead past than to walk the voluminous fence that separates his life from yours, to keep a precarious balance while you long for the solid feel of arms around you, a caress in the night. The most longing times are at night, but when you recall the past, it's a means of disarming a present -- that looks like a fencing match, a means of getting your balance. The past may be dead. But it's yours. And you can remember all of your hol-i-days: a canoe trip down a river at night . . . . . . learning to stand on one foot . . . balancing your checkbook . . . looking beautiful . . . and walking past a string of men sitting on a fence showing you their flexed arms. . . . The first time he took you in his arms, when maybe he loved you some time before the construction of fences . . . some time before you got lost at night . . . some time when you had no past together . . . when all seemed in balance. But the scales unbalanced. Words turned into arms -- firing up the aching past you'd divorced when you left your father's house . . . wounds reopened in the night -- until you had to build a fence to protect yourself, a fence built high and straight, loigs balanced. And here you are: alone in the night with only your own arms to surround you. Not much to look at in the dying past. Yet armed with the past You pull back from the fence Balanced for a moment at midnight (c)2008 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |