I Can’t Prepare for the Day This Way

‘So, lie down and drink your coffee.
Take the day as it comes.
Don’t listen to the sirens...
Are they in your streets or in your ears?’

‘I saw one on the beach one day,
Late in the afternoon, I think.
She had a large stringed instrument,
Never faced toward me.
She seemed to call the night into being,
But I could tell by her laugh:
The undoing of souls was her happiness --
So I listened as long as I could.’

I hold the thread every morning, tangled,
Coarse, multicolored. It feels so gentle to my hands.
I can’t tell my friends, so busy with the world,
So I tell myself, and bring it back to my fingers:
My soul, unraveled, soft and free of form --
Every morning, every morning before I wake.

Peter, I like the way you develop this piece. Nicely done.

Les

Thanks, Les.

I don't know how many poems I have written about starting over, Psychologically, spiritually, historically. I think it's a recognition of the old ways dying off or them not being suited to the new times we live in.

I always appreciate your stopping by, often the first to comment on a poem, whether mine or some one else's in the forum.

Peter

I hold the thread every morning, tangled,
Coarse, multicolored. It feels so gentle to my hands.
I can’t tell my friends, so busy with the world,
So I tell myself, and bring it back to my fingers:
My soul, unraveled, soft and free of form --
Every morning, every morning before I wake.


Beautiful imagery, Peter. The challenge, I think, is what to do with that thread each day. Most of us, I'm afraid, fail to recognize that it even exists.

Joe

Ai, Joseph, and some days it seems it does not exist, so we have to go out in the world, soulless and forgetful.

Thanks for dropping by,

Peter