"But I could not face the idea
of breaking bread with you" -- Sharon Olds, in a letter to Laura
Bush
Now our worlds have lapsed into silence,
undone by discursive thought.
(like a child weaned from bottled milk)
we unplant trees, shake dirt off
from flustered roots, and sink gently
into sudden insight. Sodden, a hole --
crumpled and broken, by the second,
widening, swallowing, stiffed and stifled.
Soon, coral lips will curl in hurt,
bleached white, left immobile -
uncanny coercion made sour
and heavy, your plus and my minus
burrowing into nothing,
a giant thumb-tacked void.
No longer are our worlds wrapped in fancy ribbon,
stamped and addressed to the same postal code,
then split apart into packages of meaning,
Instead, you are now a paragraph,
flushed left, edited into severe frames,
like fragrance, ambient and indistinct,
at the most inopportune times, stirring --
no less valid (just simply so),
in ending we failed to o'erlap.
