There is a me you would not recognize, dear. They’ve taken their toll, these latter days. –Over the Rhine, “Latter Days”
Forgive me, I thought
I knew you. But that
was yesterday, before
you saw the milky flowers
all a-blossom beside
the dirt road. That was before
the two crows sat
side by side on the branch
above the open window
and sang their one-note song
for how long, how long, who
could say what it is that changes
us, but we adjust, we grow new.
It doesn’t need to be meeting
the minotaur or gorgon, doesn’t
need to be losing a daughter
or trust, or feeling the melting wax
of our wings as we begin to drop,
though these things, too, but
change might arrive with the scent
of a lavender candle,
the voice of a missing friend,
the black taste of rye,
the way the high clouds shred
to pink in the sky,
an empty park bench,
or a scrap of good news, who
can say how it is that we change
with these things,
but we do, we do.
My dear, I did not mean
to presume. You change, even now,
from the one I thought I knew.
I had to do a bit of research to find our what Latter Days is but I found the song you were listening to. As for your song, I like the sensibility you channel the poem through. The “my dear” that reaches out. The changes that run through the poem, too, rich in detail. I’m never quite clear about why the speaker “presumes” or needs to be forgiven for that presumption. Some element of the story between the two is hidden away for me, something that seems larger than just presuming we actually know each other.
Does that bother you, David, the not knowing? I am not sure that I know myself … It is more the larger just presuming … Perhaps I need to adjust that.
I guess I’m responding mostly to those first two words, Forgive me, which I’m reading as “Forgive me for what?” You seem to want it read as a “pardon me” type of phrase. I see how you want the ending to circle around to that idea again, but it’s not the not knowing so much as the sense that you are about to tell me something that you shuck aside. Don’t know, seems enough people find it best the way it is, I’m probably off on this one.
Wow.
Thanks, Jim, r
Is it the Uncertainty Principle that says the mere act of witnessing changes the subject? I’m also seeing John Muir’s, “When you try to pick anything out by itself, you find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
We’re connected; and there are not “little/insignificant” moments.
Again, there’s a richness to this, depth and resonance.
That’s a great quote from Muir … Thanks, Ed. It’s all connected.
love, love, love, Rosemerry. and I loved seeing your book in my mom’s pile of religion books at home (she has worked for the Catholic church for eons, and amid her pile of “Being Catholic Now” and other recent looks at religion was your poetry. So awesome!
That is a great image of your mom’s book pile … My mom’s would be similar 🙂
Thanks for the comment, Nancy, r
absolutely gorgeous, friend.
Thanks sweet Erika