Interior Design
Puzzles and clues
disturb your field
of vision when
when you're on a roll.
Evenings that
would've been calm
get wildly undone by
your scribblings.
You try to whirl,
sufi-like, to travel
blissfully through
everyday fractals but
rarely succeed.
Why, when you were
seventeen, did you veer
away from a career in
interior design? What
swayed you over, woman,
to the fiscal ruin
of poetry? Some
idealistic notion? Your
dreamy, roaming soul?
Poor girl!
Tumbling along in
solitude, discount
clothing, screaming
to be heard, you
longed to be simpler
but at the same time
more complicated
by ardor, art, hands of
light, planets in transit,
Parisian streets and attics.
You were the wide-eyed
child who followed the lure
of beauty's release, pure
white horses, quantum
leaps, forces of the spirit
and then some.
Tragicomically nearsighted,
blinking your way
through flashes of spleen,
attempting to decode
messages that may as well
have been written
in braille, you insisted
on pawing your way
through decades of feathers
and fluff, cobwebs and dust,
the phantoms and smoke of
all that was hidden
under your numerous
unmade beds.
All your life, you've held
your breath, searching
for poems in pentimento
memories (little houses
on the prairie, butterflies
caught in jars, those paths
you used to carve through
oceanic fields of wheat).
Today, in your spare time,
you've become a thrifty
decorator of small but
livable spaces. Perusing
your Home Decorator's
Bible, you pray for good
deals on pre-used
furniture while pondering
all the options in that
overweight flip-book
containing Kelly Moore
Paints' bedazzling color
spectrum (cougar brown,
sand pebbles, ruby wine,
tequila lime).
Time has rip-roared by,
your words have come
and gone, some days not
so bad, other times flat
as cheap nylon carpets.
Sometimes, on the best days,
they come very close to you,
mockingbirds within
arm's reach, and they begin
to sing, and the veil lifts,
and you, impractical,
indelible girl,
can, finally, exhale.
Love it. Don't get me started on a poem about how I became an HR consultant/attorney! The writing of it would be almost as painful as the reading. How we end up doing what we do with this one precious life is a mystery. How we live -- are we grateful? do we love? do we see the beauty? do we pay something forward? no matter what we're doing. I think that's the magic. The life well-lived. Thank you, Jane. I'm enjoying your work -- beautiful breaks to all the administrivia.
Posted by: Jeff | Sunday, June 10, 2012 at 10:38 AM