Two things today. First, a very kind review of this series by Bob Mee on his blog. You can read it here. Thanks so much, Bob. Greatly appreciated.
Second, a new poem. For now I’m just parking it as Part 39.2.
Part 39.2
(The anatomy of a wound)
1.
How does a wound
wait for an apology? How
does a sky wait for
desire to become cloud?
2.
How many things just wait? How
many things don’t know they are
waiting? How many things
don’t know they must wait?
Who is keeping score? Who isn’t?
3.
You wait for an apology like
you wait for the last
bus, in the rain. Like
the yellow wash of a
passing headlight,
hope is soluble
in water.
4.
To stop waiting is not
moving on. To stop waiting is
not happiness. Rain waits to
fall, inside a cloud. Its
darkness is not its doing.
5.
The wound does not forget.
Nor does the sky. They
mend their holes and paint
themselves bright. Somewhere,
the sky is always holding on
to a rain cloud. Look.
6.
You don’t measure
this waiting in time. No one
waits for months or
years or a moment
or a lifetime. Tell me in
weight. How heavy is your
heart this morning?
7.
The average fluffy
cumulus cloud weighs
about a million pounds.
A wound goes deeper
than a cloud floats high.
8.
Scab is night. The cover.
The masquerade. Dawn
scratches the scab,
There is blood on the
horizon. Every day.
9.
Is waiting for an apology,
a type of vengeance? But let
us not talk about forgiveness
just yet. Listen to the
rain, it is the way
drought tells its story.
10.
An apology has to hold
the whole universe in its
hands. It has to be heavier
than the wound. How many
words make up a universe?
How many words make up
a universe that is forever
expanding?
11.
Will you wait with me?
Right there at the end of a
sentence. In the rain? After the
rain? We can wait in silence.
Or we can talk. It won’t
matter. Waiting, always
waits alone.
12.
You have to pick a side, though.
You don’t get to choose both
sun and rain and imagine
you are making rainbows.
Waiting, by definition, is
nocturnal.
13.
Silence is not an
apology. Silence is
not the voice of
waiting. Silence
is the wound.
A story in many unequal parts, some missing 
Ooh! Such a punch in that last line!
These interludes and insertions remind me of how, when I seriously engaged with memoir recently, to open one memory was to release yet more, some of which demanded to be added.
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Thank you! Yes, it has been like that, one thing triggering another, several others. While I’ve tried to keep the travel chronological, the rest is a flood. And all the poems are in a hurry to be out there!!
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This is beautiful, Rajani. I especially love “How does a sky wait for desire to become cloud?” Wow. Your pen is on fire these days.
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Thanks so much, Sherry. That’s very kind!
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Silence is not an apology, indeed! Brilliant write.
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Thanks so much, Khaya. Hope you’re well recovered now and feeling better.
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“How does a wound
wait for an apology?” – great question and great opening!
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Thanks so much, JYP!!! The rest of the poem just lined up after that verse happened 🙂
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Your “anatomy” hearkens back to Wallace Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the black feathered wings marking an old scorched part of the heart, what we know of it, what can be said, in evolving stanzas. In some ways its a departure from the body of “stories” — in form; the voice is more direct, too; — clarifying, I suppose in the manner of interludes, the more general work. It’s very well done. If wounds are mouths, why are some so silent? (PS: Have you decided — albeit conditionally, as you are still writing it — that the arc of this “story” should allow earlier work as “interludes” ? I admit to a gap of several months in my reading, so it’s curious to see interludia now inserting themselves into the main haul of “unequal parts,” of a certain voice and structure. Why do you think they’re needed? If as a form of “coming up for air,” providing additional clarification, what must they achieve? ) Kudos, too, on the review by Bob Mee. Richly deserved …
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Thank you, Brendan. Interludes have, over the last several months, included all kinds of things- readings (I did that for parts 1 to 20 ) and older work that I thought belonged to this series. Since I was writing online, it was a way to insert new and old poems into the narrative, keeping the chronology true and not going back and forth with the actual parts. The side bar has the links to poems in interludes, so it is quite easy to read them in sequence. At a later date, I will add prose if necessary as cement, but if you read in sequence, it kind of clarifies everything all on its own..I think 🙂 How’s your book going? Am looking forward to it.
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I too have missed a chunk of the series but in reading the last couple of pieces you have posted at DP I am reminded of the quality of the writing, the depth of the questions posed and the willingness to acknowledge that answers may or may not come in the forms we expect, if at all.
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Thank you, Paul. Hope you get a chance to read the rest of the series, sometime.
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I drank this poem down with such admiration and recognition. Wonderfully wriiten, terrific questions and observations. Stellar work.
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Thanks so much, Sherry.
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“How / does a sky wait for / desire to become cloud?” – wonderful!
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Thanks so much 🙂
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This brilliantly conceived and executed. I’m so glad that I didn’t miss it. From start to finish, the whole thing is cohesive, thought-provoking, satisfying and original. Bravo.
–Shay
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Thanks so much… glad you liked it. It is part of a series that I’ve been writing for months now, a poetic memoir of sorts.
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