August Blues (poetry monday)

 

(from Teapot World) (painting in watercolor by Giulia Neri)

 

 

1. soundless*

 

It left you.

Days go by in different dreams now,

That promise long lost, replaced,

Lost again and replaced and lost and replaced

And each time the feeling getting smaller as it moved away,

Blown along with time like a cluster of white seeds

Drifting quietly, so quietly,

Over a gravel path.

You followed it awhile but there

In the tall, dry grass ahead

It disappeared.

You let go.

 

Still, the warm blue of an August night

Holds all the world, still,

Enough to bring it into remembrance – we all know that.

We all felt that, the sweet remembering,

The every-breath-an-ache that replaced you

With tears in which you were not alone,

In which you belonged.

But it left you some time ago,

Maybe yesterday, maybe 2 years ago or 10 or oh,

You don't really know when.

 
Still, in the silence before a summer storm

You search, still, for the ache,

Search for distant promises

Like a shadow reaching for the dark.

 

*first published in Apeiron

 

 

2. the forms that mark in their leaving

 

I have a form.

You can see it there, above:

Call me a teapot,

Square-ish,

A flourish above as a cap,

An angled wooden handle meant,

I’m sure you see,

More to be seen than held:

The sort of bringer-of-tea

Used only when guests arrive, if then.

 

I have a place,

Resting, side-view on the bookcase,

The fourth row up from the floor,

Where I see people, gingerly or

Comfortably walking past.

More than a place, I

Suppose: it is my space,

 

Or was: there was,

There was a day

When you did not pass by

Anymore. I remained

Fixed, became

Dust defined and dust enforced

Until that rumble, two feet,

Four feet, eight and more,

Ka-runch of boots and men and scraping

And taking

As all around was swept away

Into dark boxes,

Ambassadors from other dusty places, darkened

And taken and wrapped and taken and I

Wondered where you’d gone.

 

I’m still there, locked away

In the growing wet dryness,

Silent, soundless, blue within,

Trapped within blue words,

Finding solace in memory

Only of your form

That remains passing by me,

Undefined like

Shadows in water

Flowing away,

Waiting, still.

 

3. lost within blue

 It’s not the color,

Not the silence.

It has a sound:

A rumble deep,

Present and far,

That weaves and waves toward me, beneath.

 

An earthquake, a terrible fear,

That I felt then,

That I hide now,

Inside blue,

Leading it away from expressing

Into me, through me, in me,

That you are gone, still,

That you were gone already, then,

As I laid bare in other colors,

Graying, yes, still

Green and yellow and white, in its way,

Wondering where you’d been.

 

She said: you were gone.

Gone? Gone.

 

My hand remained

But the phone, her voice, greens and reds,

Even that gray,

Disappeared in a breath, held, still,

Across all this time,

Suspended in a world above, where I went,

That last breath of mine,

As I fell into blue,

To hide from that hue of sorrow,

Within a color.