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Poetree Challenge #25: write a poem about an anniversary
Dun-dun dunnnnnnn...
E's reciting to F about kings
and things that never run from us away.
I want to beg her to stop. I want her to save
the words for another year or three:
it's still too soon after breaking up with G,
not enough time since F's father died,
and, also, H still inhabits
swaths of E's internal datebook,
stretches of secretly blue and gray
"years since" squares -- occasions too minor,
ancient, or awkward to share aloud
and yet too large to tame into the silence
of albums, lockets, or flowerpots. I want
to warn E about how long she'll live --
her full allotted span, sharp to the end --
so doesn't she want this day to remain
deliciously blank throughout the years to come,
unclouded by the ghost of these words
she's speaking right now? They ring
with all her heart, yes, and F in kind
will cherish this day, run with it toward
the time to choose a wedding day
but that will be too soon as well.
Wait, my darlings, I want to demand,
the people you're eager to prove so wrong
will rest content in their wrongness long
after the gifts and glorious rhymes
have faded into a litany of losses --
anniversaries both of things returned
to their senders, and things that failed
to come back from the alluring green
of awaysides and of foreign grass. I'd like
to hiss, For God's sake hold your tongue
and let your love be free of reins
until you've truly learned the shape of your mouths--
but were they to hear or heed me, they
would no longer be the E or F
whose threads I've spun thus far.
And so I let E continue to voice
Donne's fine words of the everlasting
and for a moment -- just too long enough --
F wants to hold onto this day forever.
- pld, 10/15-16/2012
Dun-dun dunnnnnnn...
E's reciting to F about kings
and things that never run from us away.
I want to beg her to stop. I want her to save
the words for another year or three:
it's still too soon after breaking up with G,
not enough time since F's father died,
and, also, H still inhabits
swaths of E's internal datebook,
stretches of secretly blue and gray
"years since" squares -- occasions too minor,
ancient, or awkward to share aloud
and yet too large to tame into the silence
of albums, lockets, or flowerpots. I want
to warn E about how long she'll live --
her full allotted span, sharp to the end --
so doesn't she want this day to remain
deliciously blank throughout the years to come,
unclouded by the ghost of these words
she's speaking right now? They ring
with all her heart, yes, and F in kind
will cherish this day, run with it toward
the time to choose a wedding day
but that will be too soon as well.
Wait, my darlings, I want to demand,
the people you're eager to prove so wrong
will rest content in their wrongness long
after the gifts and glorious rhymes
have faded into a litany of losses --
anniversaries both of things returned
to their senders, and things that failed
to come back from the alluring green
of awaysides and of foreign grass. I'd like
to hiss, For God's sake hold your tongue
and let your love be free of reins
until you've truly learned the shape of your mouths--
but were they to hear or heed me, they
would no longer be the E or F
whose threads I've spun thus far.
And so I let E continue to voice
Donne's fine words of the everlasting
and for a moment -- just too long enough --
F wants to hold onto this day forever.
- pld, 10/15-16/2012
