[Please enjoy this week's poem by B.N., a beautiful example of terza rima!]
Remnants
Lately you embrace the regularity
In what you know, the obvious transitions
Between the seasons, long stretches of ordinary
Days filled by simple tasks, a reason
To go out and buy a useless shade of solitary
Cloth, now abandoned in a drawer alongside legions
Of stashed rubber bands, old stamps. An imaginary
Tapestry you could never bring yourself to start
Except for a few stitches as a border, a momentary
Fidelity to a bright crimson, a heart
Shaped emblem started slowly to emerge.
Now Prussian red accumulates in the dark.
Even the letter you tried to write almost verge
On the brink of some archaic sadness.
History moved at break-neck speed to merge
Together all the details. Dead of winter, an early darkness
Tucked even the seraphs into bed, those famous piles of stacked
Eye glasses, hair and shoes and the immense
Expanse of what you have tried to explain in a letter
Give them a vision, a comb, and a map to follow
The route home tracing along the cracked
Glass frame of the one, the only photo
You managed to save, it sits like a knife
Or bread, on a table, intimate, essential.
Lately you embrace the regularity
In what you know, the obvious transitions
Between the seasons, long stretches of ordinary
Days filled by simple tasks, a reason
To go out and buy a useless shade of solitary
Cloth, now abandoned in a drawer alongside legions
Of stashed rubber bands, old stamps. An imaginary
Tapestry you could never bring yourself to start
Except for a few stitches as a border, a momentary
Fidelity to a bright crimson, a heart
Shaped emblem started slowly to emerge.
Now Prussian red accumulates in the dark.
Even the letter you tried to write almost verge
On the brink of some archaic sadness.
History moved at break-neck speed to merge
Together all the details. Dead of winter, an early darkness
Tucked even the seraphs into bed, those famous piles of stacked
Eye glasses, hair and shoes and the immense
Expanse of what you have tried to explain in a letter
Give them a vision, a comb, and a map to follow
The route home tracing along the cracked
Glass frame of the one, the only photo
You managed to save, it sits like a knife
Or bread, on a table, intimate, essential.
© to the author 1983-2010
It has a quiet reflective rhythm,
ReplyDeletea memorial to those slowing down before us.
Hi Dianne: Glad you enjoyed BN's poem!
ReplyDeleteThere is a keen familiarity about the emotions and images. I feel the poem is about me - which is always a good thing for a poem.
ReplyDeleteHi Alan: Yes, that is a mark of a good poem--glad you liked it!
ReplyDelete