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Commitment

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Take the end of the root and

squeeze. Air is not wind or

a wave. Gazing into the darkest of eyes,

needs forgotten in the tale

of becoming something more than shape,

someone more than someone who rocks

in despair or madness.

 

I held you with my

mind and in my arms, held you broken and stoic

as all dangerous dreams. I was afraid to tell you

but I told you anyway and the song grew into a sunset.

 

Eaten by gravity, blurring in potency as it traveled

past the horizon. I saw

you were the willow tree, the pine tree and the birch

that scattered leaves and seeds throughout

the large acreage yard.

I was a raccoon, a beetle bug and a tiny bird.

I moved through you, across you,

made my home inside of you. Can you see

how much of what was mine depended on yours?

When the yard caught on fire,

the fire seeped into my joints, extending into my aura

and all your seeds around me of brown and green.

 

Not a single day when I did not fight

to keep your will and commands,

not a day without struggle to keep afloat,

keep at bay the urge to sink

or draw the ravenous sharks near and nearer until

they touched – fin against my flesh and then something

sharper.

 

You love me you say, but it is a love

I cannot understand. I know it is a love, colossal, ruthless

in its perfection but it hurts like withholding, hurts

as I try to adore you and be absolved by a mutual tenderness.

You are final and in this I have no say.

I love you, but we are not

dancing. I trust you, but we are not

sharing with ease. I am left aching, in sharp

icicle-tip-pounding-lack, struggling

to make sense and find “the law”

if there is no mercy to be seen.

 

I should be lucky to know you even as I do, as most

walk the Earth without discovering a trace of your existence.

But is there something new for us?

Is there a bouquet around the corner?

A line we can cross and keep

on the other side? I give you my wings, my prints

and all of my sacred stones. Take me

into your softness or leave me here

on these barren sharp ridges. Between us,

there are no secrets, even my children

are freely yours.

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© 2018 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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Published in “PPP Ezine” July 2018

PPP Ezine: Poetrypoeticspleasure Ezine Volume 2; Issue 5; June 2018

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Published in “Chicago Record Magazine” March 2018

https://magazine-record.blogspot.ca/2018/03/body-of-whale-burnt-engraved-slipped.html

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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:

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