If Only It Were Easy*

.


If only it were easy: fill the well, you tell yourself:
you can't drink mud: you have to beckon to
the source, the flood, the infinite resource that
from its sheer abundance will take over and
take care of your sere soul: but where exactly is
the spout, the tap, the flow? – where to go to cry –

(Her prettiness was painful: exquisite
and ineffable: dark-haired nymph –
seventeen or so – fine edged, flowing – )

It’s very hard to write the truth
when all the juice of one’s
perception squeezes from so
many different fruits: to squash
it to homogeneity’s a lie.

(Can’t soothe myself today –
no psalm to say –
no blandishment or balm –
no way to calm – )

Morals are what you configure afterwards –
abstractions squeezed through the resistant
cheese-cloth of cognition from a welter
of emotions, wet reactions – thin-blood notions
you can name that seem to indicate where,
if you had the wherewithal, you'd put the blame.
But until then – oh, until then! – I dare you –

(Though we’re disposed to quiet now, the load of life
is a requirement we've both continued to embrace,
not always, Lord knows, willingly – but with, on balance,
an abiding modicum of grace. And now, pre-dawn,
as I reflect one day past the event on how much love
and joy you've given, paid, experienced and lent
and been bewildered by – )

Poor piece of sentient meat – you thing
that thinks! Relent for just a beat and take
a drink. You know a well that may dispel
your sense of sinking into hell: a brink past
which the spell might break, and what
you've given you can take. Come dip your
cup and put it to your lips and sip. Liquid
white as cream: whipped from all the colors
on the vine: divine conditions of a dream.


* collage poem