Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Love Has its Limits


Love Has its Limits


It turns out. Still there is washing to do.
Socks to be turned and pockets to check;
Stains to be treated, tended, scrubbed.

A wrinkle is a habit, etched into flesh.
Starch and press and hold your breath.
Sometimes sleep does the mending.

Sometimes hope holds a seam.

3 comments:

  1. I think what I love most about this poem is that it is a metaphor within a metaphor - mobius metaphor! - because it is about the work of love, which is hard emotional toil, but the work of love also contains the ordinary work of keeping life in order - and the way we do that kind of household work is the perfect metaphor for the other work.

    Sometimes we even spend all our time on the ordinary actual work to create order in love because the love has gone beyond what we can emotionally handle. The ordinary work gives us something to fix on when the rest of life is spinning out of control.

    And it helps us manage, daily work, albeit painfully...a wrinkle is a habit, isn't it, the way our bodies learn to just do what they do without us needing to think about it any longer. It works for a while, we go along, go along hoping it all won't just fall apart. But then, it stops working, and what a what a nice twist in the poem to help our speaker: sleep and hope: mend and hold. Because there's nothing left the exhausted speaker can do, but try to wake up new, and maybe things will be different. Love has its limits.

    Now don't make me talk about your sound and rhythm because I can't. It's simply happening to me, perfectly articulating your meaning. BOY do I feel starch and press and hold your breath. Don't even talk to me!

    I'm not sure when you and this form got married but you know it so well I think you could go on Newlyweds and win.

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  2. Well, you are just my reader, is what it is. Thanks for seeing everything. And saying it. And really, for getting me going again, and making me feel like I might keep going. <3

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  3. This is the poem I go back to today.

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