"I learned, but can no longer remember

with what dignity another’s care imbues one."

#joshuabeckman

"I love a broad margin to my life"

A Woman Alone by Denise Levertov

When she cannot be sure
which of two lovers it was with whom she felt
this or that moment of pleasure, of something fiery
streaking from head to heels, the way the white
flame of a cascade streaks a mountainside
seen from a car across a valley, the car
changing gear, skirting a precipice,
climbing…
When she can sit or walk for hours after a movie
talking earnestly and with bursts of laughter
with friends, without worrying
that it’s late, dinner at midnight, her time
spent without counting the change…
When half her bed is covered with books
and no one is kept awake by the reading light
and she disconnects the phone, to sleep till noon…
Then
self-pity dries up, a joy
untainted by guilt lifts her.
She has fears, but not about loneliness;
fears about how to deal with the aging
of her body—how to deal
with photographs and the mirror. She feels
so much younger and more beautiful
than the looks. At her happiest
—or even in the midst of
some less than joyful hour, sweating
patiently through a heatwave in the city
or hearing the sparrows at daybreak, dully gray,
toneless, the sound of fatigue—
a kind of sober euphoria makes her believe
in her future as an old woman, a wanderer
seamed and brown,
little luxuries of the middle of life all gone,
watching cities and rivers, people and mountains,
without being watched; not grim nor sad,
an old winedrinking woman, who knows
the old roads, grass-grown, and laughs to herself…
She knows it can’t be:
that’s Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby from The Water Babies,
no one can walk the world any more,
a world of fumes and decibels.
But she thinks maybe
she could get to be tough and wise, some way,
anyway. Now at least
she is past the time of mourning,
now she can say without shame or deceit,
O blessed Solitude.

Flickering Mind by Denise Levertov

Lord, not you
it is I who am absent.
At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places:
a quick glance, and away -- and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop
to think about you, and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river's purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn.  Not you,
it is I am absent.
You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow.
You the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering, perceive
at the fountain's heart
the sapphire I know is there?

Old Love Poems by Denise Duhamel

I can burn the pictures, but not the poems

since I published them in books, which are on shelves

in libraries and in people’s homes. Once my cousin told me

not to write anything down because the words would be there forever

to remind me of the fool I once was. My cousin

was the little dog on the Tarot card, barking at the Fool’s heels

as I headed right toward the cliff.

                                                 When James Taylor and Carly Simon broke up, I was shocked. Taylor’s drug use or not,

couldn’t they work it out? I was in college

and, though I didn’t really believe in marriage,

I believed in them. How could they part

having written those love songs? And how could they go on s

inging those love songs after the divorce?

                                                 But now, I know.

After time, when they reached for those notes,

there wasn’t really a beloved there anymore,

just a strand of hair each left behind

on the other’s scarf or pillow, a cologne trigger that transcended

into something more real than they were,

the lovers themselves ephemeral muses.

                                                 It’s still hard

for me to accept the notion of love outliving the lovers—

a notion so romantic, it’s unromantic. Hard to accept

that those big lumps of affection

would find alternate places to stick,

that Simon and Taylor would be swept away and marry

others. That need is not so much a deficit

                                                 as an asset,

like a wallet that keeps manufacturing its own dollar bills

even after it’s been robbed of everything.

Or to say it another way: the plant that will bloom

despite being uprooted. The new seedling that will pop up,

It’s hard to believe when you are down to your last penny,

when the soil is dry and rocky and full of weeds,

                                                 when your love

is freeze-dried into a metallic pouch and you are full of snarky rage.

You look back at a love poem you wrote and ask:

did I really feel this way? Even if you no longer remember tenderness,

even if the verse was simply artifice, your idea of love, a subspecies

you made up to tag and define that one poor sap, you read the poem again, grateful, holding the words in your hands like a bunch of flowers.

Denise Duhamel

Continuity by A. R. Ammons

I’ve pressed so
far away from
my desire that

if you asked
me what I
want I would,

accepting the harmonious
completion of the
drift, say annihilation,

probably.