Saturday, December 20, 2014

Centrifugal force

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.

2 comments:

  1. 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:

    Take 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

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  2. Ooh!
    Give 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.

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