Start in the center and move toward the edge.
Born of my mother, I’m moving that way.
Stones on the landscape are sometimes engraved.
People I’ve moved with—all moving that way,
pausing to sigh on the narrowest ledge.
Once I pretended that I was a judge,
verdict and sentence my privilege to say.
Robed in that power—such power to taste—
mercy or penalty, my right to say.
When the game ended, the rules had not budged.
Orders I give should be begged from the knees.
Centrifugal force preempts my request.
Comfort my journey, I pray from the knees,
me and my loved ones and all of the rest.
In the spirit of the beginning of this blog, I find that I have a natural comment to your evocative poem, Daniel, in the form of a poem that showed up around this recent closure prompt but didn't find its way as one of the poems I posted. So here it is:
ReplyDeleteTake Comfort
If you must
Take comfort
that something intangible
and readily available
everywhere we look
Doesn't it say something
about the weave
that exists
Underneath is all --no need
to go in search
What is the reason
for anything
yet we gather and shape
into the finite to give reason
to what is by nature infinite
And then we trip over
that limited existence
as if it were so
And full circle
back to taking comfort
The infinite agrees
infinitely with everything
that we call limited
shorthanded, closed, shut as if so
Give reason
take comfort
finding reason --taking comfort
A kind of breath emerges
and in that constant --us
Ooh!
ReplyDeleteGive reason - take comfort - finding reason - taking comfort - a kind of breath
I have so deeply felt that and feel very grateful that you have expressed it, that oscillation between the comfort of the infinite peace-by-nature and the finite-sense-giving we do as humans. Like the way in meditation that the mind clears and fills, and you clear it again, and it fills again.
I see my poem might give off a kind of darkness in reading, but it wasn't meant that way, and I think you have seen its essence, which is not dark nor light.