Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Narrative Poem by Jessica Dreiling

(I didn't write this, though I wish I did. It was written by Jessica Dreiling. All I did was break it into lines and stanzas for an assignment.)


If sunsets dawned
and the ground crunched overhead
it would make more sense.
If time crawled slowly backwards
I could happier rest in this confusion.

Instead the world moves on as it has before,
and I sit at a loss for words.
That never happens.

Ask anyone I know,
and they will tell you the truth about me.
My words pour forth ceaselessly until I ran
into country named but unknown,
a map drawn but unseen.

Love is the drink untasted
but craved from birth.
The morning glory that grows
and will not die,
no matter how many stalks I pull
from the reaching soil that is within me.
It cannot die,
nor is it sated but by a glimpse
of the object of its colors.

It blooms unbidden, unwanted,
a weed that is yet more precious
but for the very one for whom it spreads its petals.
A friend of my heart was all I wanted.
When was it that you slipped
the seedlings into my cup?
How did you call forth
the bud that first sprang up in me?
And the strangest of all, why do you stand
opposite me,
with that look on your face
like you know nothing of what I’m saying?

I offer you these blossoms
which you yourself watered.
Why then will you not take them?
Heart of my heart,
you have renamed yourself to me.
Or do you find it strange that you
could be loved by me,
an unlikely and unexpected effect
of your green thumb?

Come then,
and uproot this plant
you have so tenderly nursed to life.
Choke this weed
you have so unwisely grown,
or see me as I am.
Helpless flowerpot.

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