Metamorphosis

I feel the tug of old habits, coarseness

and jealousies, stories

and testing-outs, to feel out

the boundaries of my current space, how far

can I lean? before toppling

pell-mell down hills, into moorish gardens;

beneath the rising

of all my golden portents

fighting for sunlight, 

a quick sighting at the new view; I feel

full and bellowed, shifting and shrugging

the tug of old measurements, off

and old miss-fittings, like cold tea left standing,

there is a sea-calm in the pit of me

(a trusting tree) something

is different, it moves alteredly;

it's been so polluted by thoughts

and my frightened years (but seems

so much longer than just that) a blink:

I remember the tugging mammoth, yet

I continue to breathe, in fact I even

continue surrendering.

no, to nothing. none of it. (well, maybe

to G-d) any way of true being

does the trick, the truth is I am

manifesting myself like moths,

like quilts, like owls in the winternight do:

always asking the silly and most important questions

to the mother of the matter: Now,

who are you? I am spotted

and feathered, I see

everything that you don't, suddenly freed

from tollways, and left at the exodus

cocoon; I'm drawn out into the light, 

and under the sunshine-moon,

into those other mornings where

I open up eyelids, finding

my hands already in mudras, climbing-up

composed while I was sleeping,

reverence tied in knots, to a thick silver

bit of string. In some stories

we live life backwards

and we know everything

that has already yet to happen; pictures

on the brain, the heart's supple spine,

the paint, the warm rising

palindrome, the tip-toes.

It doesn't matter from what end

you begin at, the one from the before

or the far after-births,

barns, bathtubs, & one candle symphonics

you and I always wake up

walking into lightning rod apartments.

 

Reviews

[Ed Hart]

well yes, that's the way of it... there's no accounting for growth, the light shines here, the light shines there, we rise, we fall, one step forward, one step back, sometimes two, three, four steps back to zero, but ashes or no, we rise again, because that is what we do, and those who fall behind are listening to different music, or are afraid to let go, to "fall into the light"... it takes decades to gain perspective, to have assurance, then the strings are undone and we are no longer puppets, neither hormonally nor hindered by that programing that led us astray.... we belong no place in time, but are at home wherever our eyes alight...

[LJW]

You make me want to be a better writer.

[Emily B]

our most favorite poets become such because we feel like they have walked in our shoes and they tell stories in such a way that we feel like we are understood. Sometimes, because we are generally ego-centric, we think that they might have written the words just for us. Ed and Ken and John and Laura and Nathalie might all interpret this to themselves differently than I might. But in each case the words ring resonant and true. These are definitely words to come back to . . .

[W.k.kortas]

The learned Mr. Hart is, as usual, onto something here. Change, like life itself, is not a process that happens it straight lines; indeed, as the opening of the piece notes, we are subject to "the tug of old habits, coarseness/and jealousies". Furthermore, the piece reminds us that change never takes place in a vacuum, and this piece explores the confluence of personal change and the curious dance of a relationship, weaving the two together seamlessly. The piece is weighty without being dense; the use of language and the "touch" shown in the construction of the piece is just so, striking all the right tones. This is some awfully damn fine writing.