It was a loaded question, and the answer had a trigger finger.
Eyes searched for words
plucking them like almonds, hard in their shells
stuffing them down the barrel of your mouth
and the weight like a Magnum
unsteady
Sighted through the cross hairs of your threshold
I consider to deflect...
minimize the target
roll myself up like a down comforter
that once laid itself out like an oak from the closet of an acorn
......I can't, I can't
tired of the limp bone of cowardice
which subtracts my mass
reduces me from building to vestibule
from blocks, to cinder
like so much rubble
And so to then unfurl
a sail intent to catch wind
be moved
forcefully moved, from harbor to open sea
spread my arms
expose thumping target
feel it pierced before sound
we explode into a thousand tiny grains
for the moment forgetting we were ever a beach
an oak
a building
and not particulates, scratching between lids and eyes
knowing it only
in the shifting sand we rain
.
.
.
.
As always, your words begged to be studied, dissected like petels from a rose,read again and again. And yet again.
ReplyDeleteYour opening line is a real winner, and I love the first stanza. Very good.
And this.... "we explode into a thousand tiny grains, for the moment forgetting we were ever a beach"
is beautiful.
so much transfiguration going on here - i know of it - volatility being the only sure bet. wondering what the question was that started the whole process. wondering where you are these days/who you are these days. we become. unbecome. become anew. imagine. years are passing us. we are passing through years.
ReplyDeletexo
erin
Yvonne - Thank you! Our smallest moments are so fragile, like light...beautiful when refracted, but not so much in and of themselves.
ReplyDeleteErin - I am here. Always have been. I am me, unlike yesterday. Tomorrow I will be me, as never before :)
All questions are loaded, even the ones we ask ourselves. Following the imagery through till the end, I did enjoy.
ReplyDeleteAnthony - Especially those. So much so we fear to ask. These are the questions that most need answers.
ReplyDeletei've read this several times now and like it more and more. i especially like the order of beach-oak-building. i'm willing to be a beach, becuz a beach is beautiful, of course. and i'm willing to be an oak, becuz that's a living thing, obviously. then i bristle at the possibility that i could have been a building. but if i'm willing to be a beach, why not a building? maybe i've over-thought this (actually, i haven't at all), but it works like a clever logical trap.
ReplyDeleteI love this, Annie. The important thing is that you are seeking, ever seeking. I call myself a Seeker and hope to never be fully satisfied with the answers. I love you!!
ReplyDeleteBlessings,
Marion
*awed ...
ReplyDeletethis is fantastic - argument or no this is so bloody brave ...
And so to then unfurl
a sail intent to catch wind
be moved
forcefully moved, from harbor to open sea
spread my arms
expose thumping target
yes, i too need an inner storm to push me out from my calm berth ... and so it is .. come on cosmos, show yourself ...
or something like that ...
that stanza's brilliant, Annie!
thank you
S
Ed - I'm so happy to have you around lately :)
ReplyDeleteYour book is soooo wonderful BTW! You bristle at being a building? I wonder. A beach is so mobile, unsteady really...at the will of wind or wave. A building is solid. Rarely diminished except in the worst of circumstances. Insteresting. But I think my point that at one point we feel we are something indestructible. And then to find that we are a house of cards. And then to find perhaps the cards were more than paper.
Forgetmenow - To be "bloody brave"! Yes. Hell. It hurts being so. My skin flays itself! And then there is the salt from my own tears. Ouch! But there are rewards. The reward of being authentic...of living transparent!
the maneuvering of words !
ReplyDeleteThis is so rich-textured. The choice of metaphors is natural, persuasive. A subtle fabric of connotation unrolls through the images. The concluding two lines -- perfect!
ReplyDeleteI like the "being forcefully moved from harbor to sea" stanza or whatever you call it. I'm a poet-ard.
ReplyDeleteStill, that piece stopped me cold because that I understand. My buddy said recently he felt like someone had taken the wind out of his sails and I said, You just gotta find someone to blow you.
I'm not sure if those are the same things, but I figure they're pretty close. Point is, as crass as I put it, and as gentle as you put it, sometimes it takes an external force to push you along.
Sometimes it's nothing you can control. You just gotta wait it out.
- Eric
Thinking and contemplating ... thank you!
ReplyDeleteTim - What a lovely review. Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteEric - LMAO! A Poet-art???
Yes, you have to find a wind, but also open to it. If you're curled in a ball against the force, chances are you'll not be moved. You're not crass (although I wouldn't put "You just gotta find someone to blow you" on a T-shirt if I were you.)
Matt - Heh! Aren't we always :) Thinking and contemplating, attempting to compact these actions into words. You do it so well with so few. I am wordy!