Widow Pain

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate. - Thoreau

manifest in a momentary miracle of eternity

my imperceptible, tepid breath confronts an unwelcomed morning chill

a dewy discrepancy

sweating smalto on the window of my soul

reminding me that i'm alive

but not where i desire to be

i rub the vitreous condensation with my tottering hand

hoping to get a glimpse inside

but, alas, the view is obscured

by my restless spirit and misguided pride

dribbling down a pane of purgatory

at the crossroads of a quintessential conundrum

in exhaled exclusions

and inhaled validity

blessed with respirable revelations

on a transparent facade of conscience

a comatose vapor barrier of life and death

Author's Note

"With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?" - Thoreau

Reviews

[barleygirl]

I love your poignant message & vivid imagery, but this is overshadowed by your sheer ecstasy of wordplay. Just reading these lines, I feel like I'm communing with that part of you that loves to dig down & find that perfect phrase and make it shoot off the page with a definitive zing. This phrase: "a dewy discrepancy" just flips my pancake. And the fact that you stand it by itself on a single very short line (a technique I never use, but love it when used well like this). Here you are pounding out damp sand sculptures that startle, playing in your sandbox of words (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie

[Pete]

hmm. wow. i have been experimenting more and more. thank you for taking notice. my pleasure to "flip your pancake" - pass the maple syrup please ... :)