Jul/Aug 2014 Poetry |
Image credit: Digital Media Database, www.genome.gov
Threes
Difficulties arrive in waves,
lending weight to the theory of threes,the plunging fund, a failed engagement, the self's
doubt, all combined to inflict the particularmisery of the ongoing, the continued, inelegant fate
that declares us human. Look,she says, the hummingbird flits from leaf to
flower, its wings beating 58 times a second,a fact not to be trifled with, for what may we duplicate,
contemplate, even, at that pace?Say the hedge gets clipped, the ring whirs off the finger
and back to the jeweler, and all you know for certainis that you don't know. There is no why, no how. No
way. Or life's reel unwinds and plays only inreverse. Where do you stop and splice it, forming new,
uncharted worries? And what about that damnedbird, buzzing around your head in territorial fury? Yes,
yes, I know. These things are not my concern. Not really.But they arrive in unending repetition, one after
the other, in clumps of three—lovely, lonely,triple-threaded lines of vicissitude lapping at our ankles,
saying nothing, saying everything, saying it used to be so easy.
Memorial Day
Arriving at this point
without knowledge of the journey,the slow collapse and internal
dampening—the shutting down, the closing in—lostin the shadowed veil, my eyes flutter open to find
everything in its place, yetaltered, as if viewed from a single step
closer at a different height, offering a disturbingclarity. Looking up, I wonder that she wakes me
from a dream of dogs on this, of all days,only to detect under me linoleum in place of the bed,
my glasses skewed from the impact,the floor and left side of my head wet. You looked
like you were reaching for something, she says,and perhaps I was, though with hand outstretched
I found nothing to hold but the darkness.