Interlude (52)

A new poem for this Interlude. Part 60.1. The close of an ordinary story.
***
Part 60.1

(“Were you so sad, then?” I asked, “on the day of the forty-four sunsets?” – The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery)

For an ordinary life,
being
is resistance.

What you cannot see
when you look up
is still blue sky.

Ordinary is invisible.
Not in the way stars
disappear in daytime.

But the way you see
a field of dancing flowers
never seeing one, the one.

Ordinary has no mouth.
It tells its story, not like an earth
through changing seasons.

But like the moon. Always
showing the same side.
Parts of the same side.

Inside an ordinary story
is one moving eye that
distorts memory, inverts time.

The other eye
looks within its text
searching for itself.

When you hear the story:
cough, clear your throat, sing.
It can hear you too.

When you pass by,
throw a metaphor into its bowl.
An ordinary story is broken glass.

This too is an ordinary story.
Its grieving hips not wide enough
to birth a cloud.

You know its throb now.
Its verbs are made of grass.
Its imperatives are questions.

There are no twists, no mystery.
What can be borne, is said.
The unbearable forsakes words.

There is no crescendo, no denouement.
The curtain falls
when it can no longer be held up.

This too is an ordinary story.
Laid out like a
hopscotch game.

A sequence of squares
to negotiate
on one leg.

This too is an ordinary story.
Knocking on a door.
Knuckles raw.

In between commas and verses
and enjambments, it hides
a part, a person, a poet.

For an ordinary story
writing
is existence.

All of it,
All of it,
happens between the lines.

***
Some updates as we roll to the close of this series next week:

1. I have added a new page for reviews and I invite readers to share their thoughts there email them to me at suspension.point@yahoo.com

2. Dave Bonta from Via Negativa has been kind enough to give a home to some of the poems from this story:
Part 54: Poetry Digest 2023: Week 27
Part 55: Poetry Digest 2023: Week 28
Interlude 48 (Note E): Poetry Digest 2023: Week 29
Part 57: Poetry Digest 2023: Week 30