De-
POETRY: Love dissolves. Hearts rebel. Destiny prevails.
Untouching, de-feeling,
dis-charmed, ex-revealing
spool the film backwards,
unmeet our sweet needs.
We’ll circle the roses,
unsharpen their thorns,
curl their petals, blood-red,
in full-stop-beaded seeds.
Knit back the fibres, dis-rent what we’ve torn,
de-build our towers, diluted, unborn,
unfall for each other, wipe the sun from the dawn,
get two minus one,
we are less, unconfess,
we de-coalesce,
we’re ununioned, unblessed
as we unpick the nest,
unbend the fenders,
de-smash the glass,
make the picture undrawn.
Lives contradicted, veins twisted and strictured,
is how we’re to steadily walk from the past.
Together apart, dice-shaken, re-start,
run our fingertips over the star-ordered chart.
But my hand touches yours…
unremembers to pause…
and with destiny’s cause it fails, fails to unclasp.
NO MATTER IF YOU HAVE BEEN with a partner for a week or a decade, one or both of you will at some point get very huffy about something minor. And oh, I excel at this – for some reason especially if I’m on holiday and not quite as in-charge as I think I am. (“Well, you negotiate the Slovakian rail system then, I’m going over here!”… [later that day]… “Oh, you’ve negotiated the Slovakian rail system… OK… thanks.”) Human failings and all that. So this poem’s about the dramatic, flouncing rip-up of all you hold dear, more out of a theatrical desire for the spotlight than malice, and the wonderful way that the two of you somehow knit it together again. (Which is code for: the way your partner rolls their eyes, patiently gives you some space, and picks up the pieces.) I hope it also holds strong echoes for anybody going through a spiky patch in their relationship, the metaphorical smashing of all your windows, the contrition that follows, and the rekindling. For the professors of poetry among you [waves 👋], this is quite self-consciously an exercise in form. But it has a point, so it still counts, yes?
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Illustration from Open Doodles, re-coloured and montaged by me.
I was living in the Pacific Northwest not long ago and there was a lot of talk of dismantling huge dams on the Columbia River. There is a lot in this poem. Everything we do gets undone anyway. For good or ill. Not a bad thought given recent events here in the States. Makes me think about the half life of memory and the magic erasing power of apology and forgiveness.