Yay for Poetry Thursday! I didn't do the love/hate theme this week, though I do love that theme and am sure to do it some time. Here's a word I hate - "gal". Yeesh. In an interview once, a candidate kept saying "This little gal..." and I just could not get over it.
Here's a word I love - "linger". Such a nice thing to do, such a nice word to say.
This week, I was inspired by something else that came from Lynn - the idea of the secret nature of things. Here's the resulting first draft, sure to be revised, since I'm not liking the line breaks:
On my drive home westbound one evening,
I am most of the way home
when suddenly
The eastbound traffic is gone.
A few seconds later
over the concrete barrier
I see the overturned teal sedan.
A Toyota or Honda, the only kinds,
My mechanic says, who have it in their nature
To serve as commuters.This car’s rear bumper
Is up in the air, the body tilted, a teeter-totter
With one seat empty. The windshield is washed up
On the hard shore of the median, a sparkling beach of glass
Returned to pieces small as sand.
I see this all in a glance. The same glance
That takes in the kid standing there
Only his head and shoulders above the barrier. He must be
6 or 7, a thin kid, dark curly hair. Over his t-shirt, he is wearing
The kind of orange vest worn by highway construction workers
Its yellow reflective tape signaling oncoming traffic, saying,
like the sirens:
“Caution!
The secret nature of speed is stillness.
It breaks everything wide open
To reveal itself”.
The kid stands facing towards the front bumper of the car.
The traffic beyond is stopped dead. One man up ahead
Is out of his car, looking over the open door to where
The accident is, trying to see beyond.
I go on a few miles, and then
The traffic isn’t stopped, just slow.
I drive still thinking about the secret nature of things,
How every day the sirens go
And hearing them someone thinks
“The solid things betray their solid nature.
Things break and people break and the secret nature
of this day, for someone else, is loss”
I get home and my phone pulses, like a little heart.
The pulse is you calling and I take the heart in my hands
And answer it. Before I know if, two hours of talk go by
until finally we arrive at what the call turns out to really be
About, when I ask at last, “Did you sleep with her?” and the secret
Nature of your silence tells me “Yes.”
This news hits us like a blown tire, like those dreams
Where you have lost
Brakes, steering, everything, anything
That might keep you on the road you thought was safe.
You have nothing to say, so I hurl the little body of the phone
Little heart
And it falls silent
To my relief.
The secret nature of speed
Is stillness, and in the stillness that follows the last raced lap of
our latest words, I can think only that the secret nature of your love
Was betrayal.
I think that for miles until
out beyond it I see, like sunlight,
That the secret nature of betrayal is freedom.
That the secret nature of stillness is peace.
