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Sharon Kirtley Poem
you said I could not cook
it was an accusation
a condemnation
a comparison
with your mother and
other women of
whom you approved.
I did not meet the standard
I was not womanly
I failed all forms set
by you, your family, the island
never having been taught, I never learned.
My fear was huge.
You were contemptuous.
I was less than less.
a nothing naught
that nevertheless
had to provide
had to make
each day a life I thought I would be given.
which was wrong
but I could never stop
long enough
could never be still enough
could never breathe in and then out
understanding at last my life was my
own and never yours and so
was mine to make or mar.
My heart hurt worse when our dog died.
And I wrote a better poem about it.
12/31/2013
Copyright © Sharon Kirtley | Year Posted 2013
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Details |
Sharon Kirtley Poem
Death’s fair haired blue-eyed boy
Rode his white horse into the West.
Where they stepped the flowers
Trembled in the earth.
A sign? A significant coincidence?
Like meeting death in a bar
Or someone you never knew in a ruined garden?
The night was awash with stars,
Rotating galaxies, black holes.
Alpha and Omega came and went.
Nothing started that had not already begun.
Nothing ended that had not already been done.
The motions of time numberless, though finite,
stalks the horizon and undoes the
Grasp of life bit by bit
And holds the last of it in the knife edge of light
Falling into the very last room but one
Any of us will ever inhabit.
This is the end my friend, the final awful end.
This is no light matter of which I speak.
Passion swallowed us whole like the sea.
But only you came out alive.
Complicated and opaque, you were a star system unto yourself.
And released your spears of dark words like shards of hate at unsuspecting targets.
Evil genius and artful dodger, hell will have frozen over
And pigs will have flown if you found heaven when you died.
In the last nighttime with all the stars spinning your last breath away
Were you afraid
As your life ran out into the dark and cold?
Or did something else take your hand and bring you
Into the great warm night
Where your molecules took
Flight and slid giddily through space seeking
Another life, another face, in some other less inadequate
Universe.
12/31/13
Copyright © Sharon Kirtley | Year Posted 2013
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