929 Brookridge

If anyone is interested, my poem "929 Brookridge" was recently published in Boston Literary Magazine. The title refers to an address in Ames, Iowa. Interested parties should be able to figure out the rest from there.

In this strange labyrinth

I hate the place that I am in right now. I hate not knowing if I can believe the words that somebody says and the explanation that he gives. It is just crazy enough that it might be true, but I also know full well he could just be buying time by telling me what I want to hear. Thinking about the experiences of other people I know provides me no clarity. I certainly can give you examples of women who were too touchy, who nipped a great thing right in the bud because they were too afraid of being hurt. But on the other hand, I can give you plenty of examples of women who stayed through increasingly ridiculous excuses, and things never got better and in the end they wished they had just left the first time.

Well, if one can combine the words of a Romantic poet and a New Age pop song in one post, I leave you with those two references to ponder.

A poem by Ted Kooser

How important it must be
to someone
that I am alive, and walking,
and that I have written
these poems.
This morning the sun stood
right at the end of the road
and waited for me.

Poetry corner

I've always liked this poem, and I think it expresses how I feel right now. Sometimes you just need somebody to help you figure out what you want, and there's no shame in that, as long as you really are figuring out what you want. But I also understand that, paradoxically, it's the people who really do care about you who will hesitate about doing that, while people who really don't care think nothing about forging boldly ahead. In other words, life is complicated!

She Was Waiting to Be Told
Deborah Garrison

For you she learned to wear a short black slip
and red lipstick,
how to order a glass of red wine
and finish it. She learned to reach out
as if to touch your arm and then not
touch it, changing the subject.
Didn't you think, she'd begin, or
Weren't you sorry ...

To call your best friends
by their schoolboy names
and give them kisses good-bye,
to look away when they say
Your wife! So your confidence grows.
She doesn't ask what you want
because she knows.

Isn't that what you think?

When actually she was only waiting
to be told Take off your dress --
to be stunned, and then do this,
never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious: in one
motion up, over, and gone,
the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,
her face flashing away from you in the fabric
so that you couldn't say if she was
appearing or disappearing.

Poetry corner

I think this poem describes very well how I'm feeling at the moment: world-weary and uncertain. But I have no time to be maudlin; I have a holiday party to spearhead!

A poem by Emily Dickinson

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--
Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--
Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--

We now pause for a brief poetic interlude

"In this strange labyrinth how shall I turn?
Ways are on all sides, while the way I miss:
If to the right hand, there in love I burn;
Let me go forward, therein danger is.

If to the left, suspicion hinders bliss;
Let me turn back, shame cries I ought return,
Nor faint, though crosses with my fortune kiss;
Stand still is harder, although sure to mourn.

Thus let me take the right, or left hand way,
Go forward, or stand still, or back retire;
I must these doubts endure without allay
Or help, but travail find for my best hire.

Yet that which most my troubled sense doth move,
Is to leave all, and take the thread of Love."

Just so nobody thinks I'm taking credit for this, the above sonnet was written by Lady Mary Wroth, an English Renaissance poet.