A Fragile Beauty Writing In The Damn Cold

While translating her ordinary thoughts
to lines on paper she had a revelation,
who would want discourse, or intercourse
for that matter, with a girl who was so
patently obvious? It came hot breathed,
urgent and unveiling, she was not someone
with whom she wanted a relationship.

She had read to death and back again
every passionate and moving poem ever
written by men, and some by awesome
women whom she held in great regard,
and in the final rendering they too were
too damn obvious, condescending even;
no room for improvement being like them.

Then a line sprang from her confusion, a
hairy thing that jumped sideways from
staid and usually urbane classical fields,
landed in an undignified sprawl, square
where she’d thought a genteel opinion
might engender the right sentiment. And
it did, breaking the chain, setting her free.

Now she writes easily, cares less of restraint
or whether her meaning is bent by rogue
ideas married to obscure opinion, senses
an enjoyment outreaching the bare words,
revels in less rhyme and more meaning, dares
tilt at icons shared as sacrament. It is lonely
out there, but the cold is pure damn gold.
© I.D. Carswell 2007