Jan17

Erosion by Maureen

Erosion

We hurt,
and it’s immediate:

the mandatory evacuation
of words after the words

loosed in the suffocating black
of the storms we’ve weathered

together. What we know
of failure is loss,

not poetry
but the poetry of the heart

stilled into its flat line
once love’s been clipped

by the cutting phrase,
where the harm’s done

sufficiently below the radar,
building against what holds

back till the pressure,
too much, lets go.

We’re privy to it now
as before: the cloudburst incoming;

practice watching each other
recede, like the moon

before the morning’s flash of light.
We hold the mirror up, see

how it reflects the effort
we exhaust

saying our words to ourselves.
I can and do forgive.

Let me put one hand
next to the other,

then you do the same.
It’s a way to work

the messiness of mud
after it’s heaved, before it’s hardened.

Signed,Maureen