Sunday Poem #7
Dancing with Resistance
is a slow waltz with a great gorilla. Hot, scratchy.
A sweaty, fumbling dance that tastes like copper
pennies. That exhales a bitter breath.
I cannot see.
His shoulders fill the world, and I cannot see.
Those long arms hold me firmly to a chest
as unyielding as my grandmother’s–
a great acreage of fur that blinds me.
He dances me backward, quick-quick
sl-o-w, a ship’s prow parting the swirling sea
and we sail off the dance floor, sail out
of the room, lumber into shadows, into a
jasmine-scented garden, loud with crickets
and the soft croaking
of frogs. He pushes me down with his great
hairy chest onto a wooden bench. His massive head
trembles—he looks as though he might weep.
A river of stars spills across the sky.
He wraps a violet shawl around my bare shoulders.
Pats my back, grunts, sniffs the air for danger.
Throws back his head and howls
howls his animal grief.
……………………………………………………
(As always, Sunday is Share-a-Poem Day at the Flourishing Muse. Share your poems in Comments. Let your wild and fearless heart speak its eloquent truth. Let’s celebrate poetry together.)
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in the quiet stillness of this moment
and the next and the next,
the rush of understanding comes
- comes from where?
Small voice speaks
Quiet – you reveal the secrets
They spill out of the glass in your hand
The glass the world is held in
You turned it to the side
Tipped the balance
Quiet, you were waiting there
At the door, weren’t you
Waiting for the right moment
Hand on the latch
Like the hand tipping the glass
Waiting, waiting to ride through
With every ounce of the sea within
Pressed against it
The thunder in your ears
Didn’t bother you, did it?
Pounding rhythm of this
Swirling inner sea
You swimming forward
In translucent momentum
It was in the question that
You found the key –
The one, the million that are the same
You dared not to ask – out loud
Quiet – when the last of the waves
Finish their chaotic dance
What will be left?
~ la tyson
I sit alone in the long evenings
And the light of your love burns bright within me.
In my mind I see again your flashing smile.
Your voice once more is music to my soul,
And I am part contented and give thanks
For the memories of those our years,
And that so-long-ago is yesterday to me.
By day I see your grace in another’s perfect movement.
Other heads echo dimly the golden glory of your hair.
Bright eyes seen briefly in the crowd are very beautiful,
And yet are shadows of the two that they recall to me.
And there a lovely skin brings memory to my finger tips.
So is the time between us filled with you
While I await the joy of our reunion.
My heart jumps at the light footfall,
The laughter floating on the air–
So nearly yours–enough to conquer sadness
At the closeness of its image to your beauty.
And so the time between us lessens and grows greater
As I await the ecstasy of recognition
When all the years and tears and loneliness
Vanish as a whisper and I reach out
And touch your hand again.
DVB
Douglas Buchanan´s last post … Emergency! S.O.S. If 2 + 2 = 4 You may be in Trouble
Douglas, thank you for this moving, beautiful poem. It’s left me reflecting on loves past.
Leigh-Anne, it’s so delicious to read your poems, and to see the arc developing through them. Thank you.
Hiro Boga´s last post … Sunday Poem #7
Thank you for the wonderful Gorilla poem, Hiro. I love its daring, seeing and feeling the breath of the beast but still having the courage to do the dance, step forward.
Here’s an example of a small step I took recently.
Green
Careless, for years I wandered past
but today I stop and stand
at the edge of the marsh and watch
reeds shake in the wake of the passage of birds.
How do they stand so steady? The reeds, I mean,
every season like this, again and again, green and alive,
a stage for the performance of ducks and dragonflies,
a curtain others can swim through
that parts and closes again, fades
in the fall to brown to rise again, open
in spring. It’s no big deal. A resurrection
no one bothered to write a book about.
No Hallelujahs here.
But every spring the birds know it,
and the insects and fish: there will be green.
And my part? What is there to do but stand,
shaken by the wind and give thanks for green.
Kate Braid
Kate Braid´s last post … Vancouver Readings – October 23, 2009