You gave me a few words.
I held on to them, to walk,
guiding my tottering feet
through rushing frenzied life…
a blanket, I hoped,
to shut out the chill
of blazing cold
petrifying gazes,
configurations
to navigate a silly paper boat
I had left behind,
in a sepia photo album.
I held on to the words,
the key to the front door
safe, deep in the recesses
of my crimson handbag,
used and cared for
everyday.
New words piled up,
a mountain of acrobats,
adding, subtracting, multiplying,
factors played truant,
till the words, misplaced,
settled under the pile…
The key rusted,
fit into the keyhole no more,
threadbare blanket
thrown away,
along with the silly paper boat.
” a mountain of acrobats” ;I liked that allusion a lot.Just as I liked the whole poem.There is a subterranean stream of unease coursing through this.Beneath the deceptive urbane clarity and concision is an imminent malevolence that somehow does not quite manage or is allowed to emerge and become subject of the superficial discourse. Or is my reading of it a little too intense and perhaps edging toward the Freudian?
Many thanks Louis for your appreciation, and, your intense reading of the poem. I did not want the tone of a malevolence to surface in the poem. You are so very correct in your reading of the poem.
The poem is about ‘the end’…the anguish that rises from a sense of loss–loss of hope, certainty, of relationship or maybe even the fear of loss of life.
Thank you again.