Failures

Sometimes people are exhausting.

 

Expectation is a trap.

 

That time we stopped talking.

 

I have always walked with a limp.

 

I’ve always been an internal processor.

 

Please see your dentist on the regular.

 

There are some things from which you don’t recover.

 

That night you never came to bed.

 

We spend too much time rehearsing arguments.

 

We have all played the waiting game.

 

I bear the weight of too many transgressions.

 

How many times have you said the wrong name?

 

Maybe there is still more to say.

 

Maybe we should both walk away.

failing

sometimes

you just need

someone

to say it:

you are good.

 

not just good—

really good.

 

i mean really,

really good.

 

so good

it hurts.

 

especially when

you fail, or

feel you’re failing

 

or keep failing, or

flailing

 

in the fields,

filled

 

with promises,

or regrets,

 

or maybe

both

 

and.

Testing

You asked me to dance

and I wanted to dance.

 

You asked me to sing

but I didn’t know the words.

 

You asked me to love you

and I didn’t know how.

 

You spoke of friendship

but we never really spoke.

 

About the heart—

is it desperately wicked?

 

Or merely deceitful?

It is full of grasping.

 

I constantly fool myself.

Hold onto the wrong thing.

 

I have played the fool

too many times to count.

 

I am so full of foolishness—

Incandescent.

 

Bones burning within me

in the depths of silence.

 

Lay me on the anvil.

Fashion me a sword

 

or leave me a ploughshare.

Just break the skin.

My first poem

I don’t remember

when I first fell in love

with poetry.

Every grade had poetry;

every year we wrote

a poem. 

              Or two.

But there was never a moment

when poetry stood up and

announced itself to me.

                                      Or two.

 

I do remember,

however, discovering

e. e. cummings—

for the first time

poetry seemed playful,

or that t(here was a mystery)

to be discovered;

that language was

a puzzle

to be put together

and taken apart

to be put together.

Even now,

he and Donne remain

my favourite sonneteers.

Sonneticists? Sonneticians?

(O! no disrespect

  to Shakespeare

                           intended)

 

Remember:

to fall in love with poetry

requires you to keep reading

poetry, to remember words,

ways to shape them—

to sow poems like seeds,

to perhaps hand them

to a loved one,

or a stranger.

spring

i don’t prefer it

when it is sunny and cold;

it confuses me.

in the morning

there is a dusting of snow

and frost on the windows,

and by noon it is gone.

that’s spring! they say,

but i don’t prefer it.

it’s probably not

climate change

but maybe

i need more data.

there’s always been snow

in April – it’s spring!

what we need is rain;

moisture in any form

is still useful

and necessary.

i need to know

there will be flowers,

the trees will bud,

the grass will green,

ladybugs and bees

will do their work.

it will still be cold

in the morning

and warm by noon.

we will wear our layers

until it is summer again.

maybe we will meet outside

at the picnic tables,

go for walks again,

talk about the weather—

how short summer is;

how long the winter.