Earthly Love I

Mary Whittemore

Convention is the way
one story reverses
motivation
of another.

At our heels always
inevitability, parting
someplace we are
not supposed to be
(and want to)

We carve out habitats
negative images
thinking we have been remade.

Yet, if you are where I make
myself the most vulnerable and
feel the most safe, then
perhaps non-being hollows out being

And true words are paradoxical

Then what of matter like bone against breath?
The inside of a shell, the memorized waves
it loves?
What of constant falling after pattern,
a shifting harness
so-called newness, nothing?

Beloved, my heart is a prism
raw, bent
the refraction of invisible light
a delicate collapse, the rapid invention of color
this hidden brokenness made fluid, earth-bound, whole

© 2001 by Mary Whittemore

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