Friday, July 8, 2005

Leaning on a Fencepost

Leaning on a Fencepost

I bend myself, fetal, against you,
bare spine grinding
on the rough of your back
and realize that eternity died
in the wilt of your smile.

The kitchen reeks of peaches,
the bathroom like pine,
and I wonder at the wealth of scents
in a dying forest.

That there was no great blaze,
no apocalyptic flames,
is yet another disappointment -

I had hoped we would merit more
than a leaf-litter burial
and wordless quietude.




(chuckle of the day, I almost titled this "Mourning Wood")

8 comments:

  1. you got that silence in there without sound, quite sad actually...love the scents...

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  2. I ended up adding wordless, which was closer to a sound than I wanted to go - I was really trying to avoid mentioning sound, or the lack of it... I came pretty close anyway, and I'm fairly pleased with the results. A bit of touch up in few spots, like all the uses of "of.

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  3. I don't see that many instances of "of." The use of "wordless" could actually be replaced by something like stilted or (for some reason) descending... Regardless, I think you did a great job.

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  4. Erin, you always amaze me. I sometimes hate responding to your poetry because it always sounds so trite. "Wow! Great! Incredible!" but sometimes that's all there is.

    Thanks for the giggle at Mourning Wood. That's hilarious on so many levels. Thanks for giving this a more deserving title.

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  5. Ang, lol, I accept wows and greats, as long as you promise to give me the "wtf were you THINKINGs?!" when I deserve them :)

    V~ I took out a few uses of "of" already, but there are still a couple in there. I've begun to realize how often I use that word...

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  6. resultant quietude would be another possibility

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  7. weak, disheartened... I'm thinking, but I'm not all that concerned about having used wordless to be hoonest :)

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  8. Your poetry is astounding! Deserves a slow reading and lengthy feelings.

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