Whatever color it is
A hovering gray
Of a sky, of a day
There is feeling of
a careful distance
From the several
window panes
To stay.
With the glass
misinforming
as an empty
sunroom will.
Whatever color it is.
A tear stain gray
in years so still the
drawn in cell walls
become by
discouraged dreams
of home.
Whatever color it is.
An age made gray
why ask
when it became
white… perhaps made
In the small agony
of surprises
each time
in the
image the
mirror provides.
Though not in lying,
It will not make
plain the next
time is not the
last time.
The finger snap
of one time
already passed.
I saw you in the semi-darkness
stepping on the work bench
foot rest
one dark heel below the other
and the glass shade held
by the hand that created it.
Bound and belonging on
a foundaried base.
The art in reverse
On the glass, maybe cosmos
Dangling
Or thick dahlia….
The light was less so,
the Jerusalem lily unbrightened,
As though through
settled fogginess
silently asking it be
brought to me
brought to me
and no other.
Once to every man and nation,
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever,
‘twixt that darkness and that light.
– James Russell Lowell
With you, inside,
from the pachysandra,
a barrage of deep green
and cheering white, soothing
And electrifying
protecting ardor from thought.
On the cast bench,
all debts paid,
drawn back to the boxwoods
aside the
crushed stone path
A smokey whiskey
and black poplar parasol
matching the thick sky,
no contemplation only
an industrial puff in the air
left
From the end of work days
facing a bellowing fire
miles to the east.
Let questions go unanswered,
I wonder if there is anyone
with the confidence
To fill in what you think
He places the gold
Banded watch from
His father on the dresser
Top.
People don’t have to
Be bad.
Her crescent
ear rings
Unclipped. The rest
Are in
The soft pink box, some
Gold trim left, though
Like Childhood,
now parts
have rubbed away.
People can be
Kind, with a smile and
An unambiguous okay.
Saturday on the main
Street, the felt fedora
The cashmere scarf,
They stroll before
Store windows,
With Christmas coming
next
The manikins are cold.
So was said, give
of yourself, it never
Will grow old.
But in the game
of freeze tag
some never heard
the word to go.
The kids will bring
Their kids tomorrow.
They ask to light
The dinner table’s
Candles and why
The bed’s so high.
Abandoning the
Question before
Can come an answer.
It may be because of Simple boredom you don’t want it Mentioned or that Love is like the Weather with nothing To be done About it. It may be that Question marks Belong to you, Like pain that gets Respect. It may be You know what’s Been seen before and are ready to Toss it aside. Except For how we hurt Ourselves, so Much else is uselessly Transparent. Give the handsome Gentleman a prize And send him on His way. I don’t know why it seems Necessary to make You into words. But a mirror cannot show what is real which for you is something That falls between Indifference and disregard. Amidst your thoughts Buried like water A hundred feet below The surface. There are glimpses in Which with forbearance you’re Now a generation like others gone Before where Less was given than should’ve been gotten.
RLB 11-15-2021
notes:
Been thinking about how when someone has a bad experience, for example a loss and someone attempts to show empathy….the aggrieved says something like “no you don’t get what its like to have this happen”….”you don’t know you just pretend to understand”. “you’ll never know how it feels to lose….” etc. That conversation is in so many TV dramas, police shows (I watch British ones) or the latest was Baptiste on PBS where Baptiste is told off this way even though he had lost his daughter to a drug overdose…the other person had lost his sister….My current thinking is that saying to someone you “can’t understand” is BS..people understand in their own way and don’t have to experience in the way the grieving person experiences something. I think putting another other person down for not being as injured as I am is useless and vain anger. I was trying to wrestle with this idea in this thing I wrote….in which I am saying…a loss another feels can be understood and/or imagined. What might not be understood by someone else is how we torment ourselves, how we hurt ourselves and obviously why we do it.
Doubt I’m the one to ask
For what to say to your kid.
Waiting to be a kid no more.
A hard spot, for both of us.
Far from advice, not only wrong,
but ignored before forgotten.
They’ll find their own truths
The heritage of
Years and tears.
Only friends only friends
Only they
Don’t mind what’s said.
With flesh and bone
worth
So damned much more
Than gold.
To get by, you’ve got
To try
things you’re told.
And hear
how many times that
The ice you’re walking on
Is this damned thin.
Should you decide sometime
To give in and look
back, maybe what I say
Will be mostly true. There is
more luck needed than
Ever ever you get.
It kept burning. One candle that Held the wish. Maybe to keep The others from The dark. A shrug unapparent To most, for the gift with your name on it. Maybe to build Humility. A heart may Hold me along With another. One Anxious child Amongst the smiling waves On the gangplank Shudders, color of The white life saver. Maybe it hangs like Decoration not To bob in the cold Ocean.