Poetry Thursday

   Today's theme is time, and though I had plenty of it, no inspiration accompanied it. So, yet another old poem...

 

Secrets

Listen. I will tell you everything. The weather is turning. 
Soon it will be time to unroll the Persian rugs and lay them
on the polished floors. 

I will hold nothing back. I am brittle, like glass; like leaves
of a tree too long without water; a cocoon, untenanted,
exposed to the sun. 

This morning I wore a jacket to walk the river path. Two crows,
in their black robes, pecked at the body of a thick green snake. 
My mother was a northerner.

She carried me across thin ice. Many times I slipped beneath
the frozen water. I never knew my father. Tomatoes are laid
on the kitchen counter,

red bulbs on the maple wood. I prepare the knife:  steel blade,
sharpening stone. I want to slice to the seedy centers without
bruising the skin. 

I loved my father. He had perfect, beautiful hands. He kept
them manicured and clean. There are reasons you must not
touch me. My grandmother

lived with God in her garden. She fed me carrots and peas,
she put white lilies by my bed. I am telling you everything. 
It is cold here. 

Birch trees bend in their white sleeves, leaves hissing in the wind. 
A blade of sun slants down, casting serrated shadows on the hard
ground. Are you listening? 

Do you understand? The dog waits, and waits, at the door. 
Yesterday, I dropped the Murano vase. It cannot be repaired. 
I cut myself on sharp, thin air. 

 

Comments

[gkgirl]

i found this
so intriguing...
serrated,
sharp thin air
blade of sun...

i had to go back
and reread
3 times
for my own enjoyment...

[desert rat]

Neat, interesting how partway through, the last line of each stanza is really the beginning of the next one. And the odd contradictions: "I never knew my father", and yet "I loved my father, he had perfect, beautiful hands". Which could both be true, I suppose. And the way a few oddly disturbing things are dropped in, like "there are reasons you must not touch me".

[twitches]

This poem kicks so much ass. I love the lyrical, rhythmic flow of the lines, the language so delicately chosen...I was entranced from the first word. Truly beautiful.

[Dick]

Haunting & evocative. With its sequence of isolated, sharply defined sense-recollections, it captures so well the insecurity of memory. Shades of Beckett & Pinter.

[SB]

Thank you, all. So much.