severence

there are days
when everything i have known
disappears and
appears again
in a new body
in a new light--
when all strangers become friends,
all friends, people i have not yet met

days when the weather comes
from the inside
and i think how little
it has to do with me
even though
i have carried it for a long time
as if it did

there are days when the moon
strikes a pose
in the morning sky
against all rules, unashamed,
calling out the names of ancestors
each marked by a dream
waiting to speak

there are days when i fear dying
even as i
notice that in the                                                               empty space
where my body pretended to be,
a new life already begins

Comments

[Peter]

lekshe,

I really had fun reading "severance." I think I'm getting in touch more with why I like your poetry. I realized this week that I get the most out of writing lines when I take a shot at the simple-diction, heart-level, dreamlike verse that I find in your writing. (And I do like some of my poetry, even though it is bad poetry.) Also, your poetry kind of looks at some of the same stuff mine does sometimes. This caught my eye:

there are days when the moon
strikes a pose
in the morning sky
against all rules, unashamed,
calling out the names of ancestors
each marked by a dream
waiting to speak

You connect three things that I connected in a poem a few months ago: the moon, ancestors, and dreams -- specifically dreams waiting to speak. I think that's interesting. Here's the poem:

Sweet Dreams

He is taller, but I'm older
and after midnight we played tennis again.
I felt the sweet rivalry, years since shut-in,
confined to a handshake, blanched and flat
like the rackets we dropped in my dream's backyard

If the sun lit our game, the moon preserved it,
flattened it and shut it in a book of dreams,
the yawn of some future sunrise

Mimi's dead, but she said that
everyone she dreamed about is dead now.
I wonder if, just here,
her dreams are playing on a silver screen

The "he" is my brother, and Mimi is our grandmother. She died at age 91, a few years after complaining to me that everyone she dreams about is dead. The idea of dreams waiting to speak seemed important.

I hope your summer is coming along.

- Peter

[dale]

Wonderful. Reminds me faintly of some lines in Bonta's Cibola about the morning star and the dawn -- every supposedly dim space could suddenly overflow with light. Does overflow. Even for me, sometimes.