Hearing the label of obstreperous,
I didn't conform,
but investigated other potent words.
Dogged by,
"You're so off the beam,"
I looked for balance
and wondered about sunbeams
and how no one can really see light,
just what bumps into it.
Even if, like light, I'm invisible,
a particle or a wave,
I bump into things
that matter,
so I'd say
Mom's words
were effective.
© 2010 by Kathryn Feigal. All rights reserved.
a particle or a wave,
I bump into things
that matter,
so I'd say
Mom's words
were effective.
© 2010 by Kathryn Feigal. All rights reserved.
I realize this is not a poem, but I've hit the wall.
...so may I offer this poem by Lee Upton
from the New England Review, Volume 27, #1/2006
Undid in the Land of Undone
All the things I wanted to do and didn't
took so long.
It was years of not doing.
You can make an allusion here to Penelope,
if you want.
See her up there in that high room undoing her art?
But enough about what she didn't do -
not doing
was what she did. Plucking out
the thread of intimacy in the frame.
If I got to
know you that would be
- something. So let's make a toast to the long art
of lingering.
We say the cake is done,
but what exactly did the cake do?
The things undid
in the land of undone call to us
in the flames. What I didn't do took
an eternity -
and it wasn't for lack of trying.
