Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Fading Summer's Light, Lack Of Salt Is My Dilemma

Be quick, it's late. Here's a poem on entropy

Fading Summer's Light

The flower spilled out
And clutter was on the ground
Below the tired stalk.

Clutter is flowering now
In the dreams of a good life
And this shine reflects
On the face of the fading
Summer's light, on you, me.

******************************

He's not worth his salt. That refers to the pay of a Roman soldier. This I guess is a poem about low self esteem.

Lack Of Salt Is My Dilemma

Muddy cold bog life
Streams through my sour damp sore heart
And its hidden things.
I would reveal them
But I’m afraid of your dark
And acid reply.
I’m afraid you’d say
Something true and deep, something
I don’t want to hear,
Something that would tear
Me limb from soft soggy limb,
Leave me stripped, alone.

This is what I do to me
In my salt diminished dreams.

***

A quote from AA's Big Book: Lack of power is our dilemma. Salt can stand for a kind of power quite easily. The book goes on to say: We need to find a power by which we can live. Where and how are we to find this power?

13 comments:

  1. Inside ourselves eventually :0)

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  2. Michelle, we will love you until you can love yourself... :)

    Maybe we won't stop loving you even when you can.

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  3. That last one is so strongly worded and sad. It brings out the maternal instinct in me.

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  4. Rachel, I am glad that even when I wrote the Lack of Salt poem it was a role play. Somewhere I have been and could go again, I suppose, but not somewhere I live these days.

    Faith, thank you for a good fairy tale that is a counterpoint to my poem.

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  5. I’m afraid you’d say
    Something true and deep, something
    I don’t want to hear,
    Something that would tear
    Me limb from soft soggy limb,
    Leave me stripped, alone.

    So sad, Christopher. This one is so sad.

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  6. Karen, yes it is, and would be terrible if it was the end of the story instead of a little piece of the story.

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  7. All these poems of yours
    one would be enough
    to last an entire season

    to read them
    over and over again
    all summer long

    then in the face
    of fading summer's light
    I'd be ready
    to face the next

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  8. sitting here reading his poems
    eating froot loops out of the box
    thinking....what is ailing my man of the northern wall?
    cold winter getting to his bones
    or is it the early sunsets
    does he like the cherry ones or the lime ones best
    in frootloop land.....

    just being silliness.....

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  9. Jozien, you are a kind and good lady to write me a poem like that.

    Cherie, nothing is ailing me, not right now. I publish these poems in order and I wrote these two last December, early in the month, and like I wrote in reply to Rachel, I was role playing then as well.

    I love your fruit loops idea and I can see you eating them, oh yes. I can't tell you when I last if ever ate any though. If you offered I probably would accept.

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  10. Christopher, I already do.

    But I will take all the love on offer, thank you.

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  11. Michelle, consider love offered and me doing a little dance in celebration.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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