"avowing" poems
1542
Come show thy Durham Breast
To her who loves thee best,
Delicious Robin—
And if it be not me
At least within my Tree
Do the avowing—
Thy Nuptial so minute
Perhaps is more astute
Than vaster suing—
For so to soar away
Is our propensity
The Day ensuing—
2.7k
Here lies my dog, motionless in his kennel
unable to wag his tail as he always did.
Yesterday when I saw him, curling helpless on his mat
he still wagged his tail and from him arose
a faint tremolo of love
punctuated by gutturals of pain.
At some bleak hour of the night,
the last ember of life died down
and his supple body turned stiff and stark.
Now he lies straight and majestic in death
leaving a track record of love
far difficult to break,
- a love no vessel can hold
or equated with what we humans feel.
Speechless as I stand, memories churn within.
He came to us - too young to be weaned,
a glossy black puppy with tawny gleaming eyes.
His short, sturdy limbs, large drooping ears,
slender waist and elongated frame
well proclaimed his pedigree aloud
So full of mischief, he capered and hopped,
like a new born calf, always up on his heels.
Sniffing with moist nose, he dug and dug
as if unearthing a treasure trove
buried deep beneath the soil.
With alert vigil, he guarded our home,
barking at strangers and driving rodents away
He expected nothing in turn but love.
His loyalty as we deem was never servile.
Never was he on chains to be hauled like cattle.
He enjoyed sauntering through the courtyard
giving company as we took our evening rounds.
He gloated rubbing his body over our knee
and sat content as our stroking fingers ran all around
Licking our feet and arms,
what he conveyed in inarticulate words
could be deciphered thus -
‘I love you, love you true’
Like the bouncing ball, he often played with
our hearts made to bounce up in love
and our hands fold in benison
for a comrade who departs,
valiant in life and loyal to the core
hoping to meet him anon
on the far green meadows of bliss,
still wagging his tail, avowing a bond
too strong to be snapped or splintered.
Jun 1, 2016
Jun 1, 2016 at 8:57 AM UTC
These cold months leave me haggard
Breathless, as I struggle to regain my grip
Slipping through plains of uncertainty
Seeking that evasive simplicity
Scoffing at past words of comfort
That so gallantly wrapped the falsehood
Of time and its fabled curative powers
How I have been eagerly deceived
Jaded breath travels forward
Seeking concord in old and battered retentions
To only be limited by brooding reality
Where lays my pool of forgetting?
Utterances wisp past insistently
Avowing it to be just beyond
While others toy and slowly slither
Hissing of its non-existence
By miscalculating step I fumble
Mind drained of all, but shelled rummage
As it seeps into my frame
Ever hunting that eradicating amnesia
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 5:03 PM UTC
My mind is an open palm, raised to the trees
avowing and disavowing the love of sunlight,
and translating fractured thoughts caught on the breeze like cottonwood seeds,
snatched by a hand in the air;
like the way we used to catch mosquitoes, and ended up with one one another's mingled blood crushed into the lines on our palms
and to be honest,
I didn't mind it so much.
I guess I wanted to reclaim something
I guess I wanted to take back a little of the life that was siphoned from us
I am sick of lifeblood being stolen and replaced with poison, and the anticoagulant that keeps it flowing long enough that we never know we've been bitten until it's gone, and carried away in someone's belly, where it melts into so many others inside their stomachs
It's so easy to let your heart get to racing, long enough that you don't know what's being taken from you. Like the first time I let a man take off my shirt in the back of his car; he used his hands to show me where I could stand to be improved; carving another woman into the air,
and she would live there like a ghost for so many years.
Sometimes I still see her.
Sometimes I am afraid that I'll never know what it's like to feel safe in the eyes of a man.
But I always feel like that now; peeled clean, exposed, disrobed to the heels in front of everyone. And there are so many hands, creating ghosts for me to fear. I am afraid of being afraid to let anyone near me, especially since I welcome it so easily.
God help me.
God help us.
There is comfort in being crushed to one another;
our essences coalescing in our minds and open hands crashing together to catch the cottonwood memories, stinging before we know what’s hit us.
There is comfort in being bled together, our grief being wed together, and being folded into one another in the bellies of sleepless nights.
God help us
There is nothing I can do except feel numb next to you.
God help us,
There is nothing I can do except feel alive in pain next to you.
My mind is an open palm, raised in a question,
Translating fractured thoughts,
Caught between us.
Jun 29, 2018
Jun 29, 2018 at 6:58 PM UTC