October 14, 2012

• Week 42: Bread Alone

  It’s been awhile since I’ve had a book of poetry at my bedside. I like reading a few poems before going to sleep so I can think about them as I drift off. I picked up this volume because of the title, “Bread Alone.” It was not at all what I expected, although I can’t quite say what it was that I expected. There were a few pieces that I really liked:

  from “Languedoc”
  …
  Not to be young forever -

  But rather to travel as a mollusk, a barnacle
  a subatomic particle, to become nothing
  more than

  the passage of tiem itself -

  an eternal witness to every small death
  that happens nto when we die
  but when we stay alive.

  from “Rock Bottom”
  …Praise the brave
  who take the plunge

  and trade every article of faith
  for a shred of compassion or reason –

  either one.

  from “I Have Not Forgotten You”
  All poems are love poems
  if you read them right

  to left or left to right
  for they assume an other

  we are forever
  trying to reach.

  …

  There are no legitimate borders
  in poems – no fences, no walls, no checkpoints -

  for the spirit that inhabits poetry
  is a sad ghost, and all poems
  are made of mourning.

  ---

  “work”

  tallow moss
  stone wall

  winter grey
  road alone

  this is all

  I long
  to leave

  nothing
  more -

  a row
  of words

  a mile long

  • 1:57 pm
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