Myth of Arrival

The metaphor of friendship being like a plant (a night blooming rose, let us say) is not new but I think it will work nicely. Two people agree to combine their energies and fortunes. A plant roots itself in the ground. To break that connection, for whatever reasons, will have dire results. For the plant. For the friends.

A friend goes through chemotherapy. She keeps her long hair in a box next to the bed. The ghost of the hair recalls what it was like to be brushed. "This too shall pass," Solomon writes. Yes, but I was hoping not so soon. Not now. With no answer anyone would want or be able to use. We are all hoping for a little more.

The song I wrote for this poem ("drink you dry") was inspired by a line in a poem by Amy Gerstler, "… The throat is a road. Speech is its pilgrim" (from Hymn to the Neck). Perhaps the song is, in itself, an answer to the "why?" no one will give me. The poem below is another attempt to make sense out of the senseless. It is still a sonnet, I simply broke the lines at every 5th beat instead of 10th (more or less, but who is counting?) … Viva sonnets!

And we are physical
shape; to give voice,
to feel, to give pause,
I brush out your hair
(no, there was no hair
brush; only a choice

to comb my fingers
through the empty air
where your hair might once
have been). So tonight
I hope you will not
be disappointed.

And since I've drunk from
the gash of sunlight
I think I've become sad
at your wasted
beauty. I have a purple
bruise on one

ankle. True. I don't
know you as keenly
as I thought I did.
I have grown remote
under my skin. No
frenzy. Please listen.

Once I drank you
dry but now I simply
gag on the rose left
blooming in my throat.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Original Poetry, Original Song, Original Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.