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Open Poetry #29
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Old_Shoe_New_Laces
Junior Member
since 2003-06-16
Posts 31


0 posted 2003-11-03 03:22 PM


"Love affair with Elizabeth Bishop"

Where does one begin
when words are never enough;
September 4, 2003,
Somerset Street, I stand
in line in the rain outside
NJ Books, feel like a
Russian boy waiting to buy a
loaf of bread at the market
and when I finally get in they
take my slip and bring you
out from the back.  You are
in poor shape, used, thrown
perhaps; abused.  Your ears
have been cut, torn from behind,
one can almost smell
the blood, what your body
must have endured
in that time, and now
coming with me, we
walk together to the
library beside Murray
Hall. I feel terrible,
know you must feel
terrible also, so sitting
at a table I suade
the ebb of emotions,
run my hands across
your smooth form, attempt
to mend the wounds, clean
your cover, though I can
see now that the scars shall
always remain.

I ask myself, want to
ask you, how all this
came to be, but only silence
persists in such instances.

Friday evening, returning home
you are with me and
within my thoughts the same,
so when I stand out under the sky
in the pitch of black and look up
we discuss the stars, how clear a
night it is, and how although we
can not spot Venus, Mars is the
closest we will witness
within this lifetime.

This says something certainly,
though we know not what.

You are young now,
as I am young.  The world
gives way to our thought.
It quakes in California,
finds peace in the lapping waves
on the shores of the Fiji islands.
The earth and our mind
One, if we permit;
a thick of woods
in which the squirrels
busy themselves among the
highest outstretched limbs
of an oak tree to loosen
acorns
for the harvest.

Thus, poetry is pre-written.
Salmon swim upstream to
spawn.  An inchworm climbs
upwards upon a silken thread to
regain its position on the
leaf of a cherry tree.  

In the front seat of my
black Dodge, parked in a small
lot off Rt. 80, where one can look
out over the forests and
farms of Northern Jersey, you
turn to me and smile, lay your
legs across my lap and tilt your
head back into the space between
the seat and window.  No words
are produced by our tongues, yet
language  
exists none-the-less,
here
in these solemn moments
to our-selves.

I will leave you soon, find my
way to a ship and depart for
uncharted lands.  Know now
though, that someday I shall
return, bend the bow and stretch
the strings to the arch that
maps these beginnings.  

Penelope of Ithaca, it has
been written, we shall
persist.


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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354
Listening to every heart
1 posted 2003-11-03 03:27 PM


Thus, poetry is pre-written.
Salmon swim upstream to
spawn.  An inchworm climbs
upwards upon a silken thread to
regain its position on the
leaf of a cherry tree.  

~*~

You leave some mighty big thoughts behind, y'know?

Martie
Moderator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-09-21
Posts 28049
California
2 posted 2003-11-03 04:27 PM


You write with such grace.  A poignant story!
icebox
Member Elite
since 2003-05-03
Posts 4383
in the shadows
3 posted 2003-11-03 06:25 PM


The mind
suspended sometimes
by a single thread
of thought,
rings clearly
when struck
by the image
it has wrought.

Old_Shoe_New_Laces
Junior Member
since 2003-06-16
Posts 31

4 posted 2003-11-04 12:18 PM


Thank you kindly for reading and commenting.  Take care.
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