I once thought love
meant a trite Romantic metaphor --
"A bird that soared above some far-off shore" --
calling gently among the metronomic whispers of the waves,
casting a fleeting shadow on sun-kissed sand
where sea spray mingles with the scent of seaweed.
But after four weeks' absence
and the silence of those thirty days,
I saw, while in traffic,
a flock of seagulls
drifting lazily as flies
over the Oakland sewage plant.
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 8:10 PM UTC
Tonight I have no words.
I cannot grandly sweep my pen
In flowing arcs across the page,
Drawing little soft impressions
(little soft depressions)
That show how lovely pain can be.
I cannot play the great Creator
Who rips a vital pulsing mass
from out His chest,
And molds still-beating clay
With a sad old potter’s gentle hands
into a little melancholic harpist
who plucks the heartstrings perfectly.
No, I have no words that fit
Like others have made fit before,
composing language to fit all the inward lines and curves
(I once knew a few of her’s)
that twist and turn and come entwined,
(the twists and turns of long ago)
crying “Lacrimosa!” in some wee hour
as the breeze blows a lacy curtain back.
I am no Aeolian instrument
Sounding a sweet ethereal chord into the night.
I am the vacuous breath left behind in silence
When the musician’s music stops —
A tuneless referent —
An empty exclamation mark
Howling noiselessly in space,
Meaning nothing
And everything, all the same.
!
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 3:37 PM UTC