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Paradise

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 21, 2024| 9 Comments »


after “Pleasure” by Rick Barot

It was a garden, they said,
with an apple tree and one
man and one woman,
always blissful.
And while I don’t doubt
this, too, is paradise,
I know well the paradise
when one woman is alone
in the garden pulling up
bindweed by the roots,
knowing she’ll never get it all.
And somehow there is pleasure
in the endless pulling.
I know the paradise
when fifty-thousand people
sing together a song
about heartbreak.
And the paradise of a lover’s
arms when I’m weeping
is somehow even more paradisical
than when the world feels easy.
I’m not saying I want
things to go wrong.
I, too, pray for peace.
But I know now that pain
does not preclude paradise.
The bruised apple
makes a sweet sauce.
The arm that aches
still holds the beloved child.
And after a fire,
the world grows back
with such startling green.

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