Life is an exercise
in burial.
We bury memories.
Thoughts.
Feelings.
I fight each day
to keep them buried.
But like volcanoes, sometimes eruptions
can't be contained.
And the lava slides down the outside of my skin
in the form of hot sticky tears.
Molten.
Burial is frantic.
I'm burying ghosts.
Burying the undead.
When we play on the beach,
I ask my friends
to cover me with sand.
Dust to dust.
Ashes to ashes.
Your progeny will be as many
as the stars in the sky.
And you'll lie in the sand
trying not to cry.
I am attempting
a frantic burial.
I am failing.
2 comments:
This really struck a chord for me.
I tend to bury what I fear I cannot bear. Sometimes I think learning to bear what I fear is far better than putting in so much work to keep it buried. If only it were not so difficult.
Thus:
Bury all I fear.
Learning to bear is better.
Un-shed tears still sting.
reminds me of elizabeth bishop (stolen from a close friend's wall) . . . . .
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
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