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Folding
The kernel of this poem arrived while taking in washing that had hung on the line for about 2 weeks, since just before Juliet died. Halfway through taking it down, I had to find pen and paper and write what was in my heart, lest I lose it.
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Folding
Numbness comes not
creeping but routing the roadblock,
emotion block of everyday duty
designed to maze my mind.
Mind hazes.
Away, abroad, anywhere but here.
Stop … do not pass … do not …
concentrate on clothing:
divest of pegs, prepare to pleat.
Boldly folding.
Crimped creases storm into a shirt
seams suggest paper, pretending
perhaps a prelude: To a lazy penguin or
pale lotus, long petaled lily.
Shoulders fold in, not crane, nor gar.
Not beginning a butterfly, just me
and shirt. Completed. Folded. Lifted.
Basket bound.
Mysterious in the moment,
an age of ache, an ague of absence.
Absinthe might sink my senses,
lack of my beloved, love being lost.
Beware! Be where?
Be longing
for her to be belonging.
She, my world,
still in my universe.
Not receding.
Comets circle and cycle across
solar system, sunward rounding,
retreating defeated, conceding
to the darkness.
Analogy malfunctions.
Thought a broken record.
Peace, or oblivion; living on
is costly, love forever lost.
Comets always return.
June 2023
Empty Chairs 