Poem Sunday

Poem #5

This poem is not about you.

These words are an arrow shot through

The black canvas of night

Which leaves a white hole that you call the moon.

These lines are a leafless tree dying on a coppered plain,

A claw clutching at empty metallic overhead blue

Attached to an underground body writhing in pain,

In the last clonic spasms before it gives up the fight.

This tree was not planted; it just grew.

I alone am the one to impugn.

This is not at all about you;

This poem was never about you.

This hand on your knee

Is also not about you.

This touch will not set you free

From imagined bonds of hopeful patience.

And all my deliberate reticence

Is not enough time to infuse

Your eager numbness with enough feeling to know to refuse

The tap tap tapping of my fingers on your thigh.

This was always just a bundling of words that must end with a sigh

11/25/18