I wonder now why everyone is drawn
to sadness. I guess we all need that kind
of awareness, like this aching I feel
for the many hues of sunsets, the small
crack on my wall, couples whispering
to one another on benches in parks.
I put on a song and the verse just
devours my heart with such vivid distress
that I have to walk away, anciently young,
to my earliest memory: the sea, its stones,
the blue plume of a wave's crest. I guess
this makes for consolation, the horizon
insisting on how high things are, and
always that wide expanse of, of, well,
nothing. Maybe loneliness. The sounds
of the city tend to betray what I want
to say. Mufflers and what is droned
by untamed engines passing through
the poem's take on what's the word
again? I can barely hear it now,
that word, hiding in its own shadow
muttered under someone's sigh,
allowing the leaves to fall in their
usual, quiet way, toward their usual
quiet places. And we wake up to
the beautiful mess we've made
of our lives -- the constant sweeping,
this want for cleansing, this need
to rub my eyes, rise up, and just
give in.
R.I.P., Karla.
