Monday, August 29, 2016

Robert Verdon, #282, Catching Up


Am I beyond anger? Am I a rose?
Once I met a woman with a whiskery chin

Drinking problem, domineering husband, very thin
Wrote too; I thought she was old

I’m that age now
Googled her name — dead three years,

Obit. and all, behind the past’s wall.
The sun is a blood clot on the skyline


Let justice be done

6 comments:

  1. Very fine, Robbie. "Behind the past, the wall"?

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  2. thanks, Rob. I wasn't sure about that line either — will have to think about it.

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  3. Scary, old age and poetry, facial hair. The past's wall is odd but makes you think. The wall of the past. The past is a wall.

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  4. yes, 'the past's wall' pulled me up too - 'the' definite article works like a formal structural impediment we want to skip over quickly in the poem for the sake of a subjective lyricism but I think/feel it should stay - perhaps because it forestalls the ability to return in the desire to go back, precisely at the point/moment we look back?
    Actually, you put it pithily in your comment above :)

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  5. Yes, 'a wall made thicker every day' is the ticket!

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