“The hardest part is when the river
is too swift and goes underground for days on end”
Jim Harrison (Songs of Unreason)
It was because we moved the stone
I’d let you set the pace, that was the stumbling block
after all, in your way of seeing things there was just the one
a big, knowable set-to and my own uncertainties
taking no direction, only notes, I’d mentioned probabilities
torrents gushing , Charybdis pools of grief
an eventual dissipation into where the boulder had stood
– and like Aeneas I followed after, for that is always agreed
Down there we learn to expect the unacceptable
to accept that the unexpected will deafen both our ears
with its years of echoes and force-fed silences
at times, campfire shadows come crawling in three dimensions
classic gods, round-shouldered in smooth, limestone piles
get up and walk on feet of clay, and all along the mucous trails
grief slides beside white, crumpled lines of tissue
picking out the path, ticking off the days
Our meetings could be so comfortingly cosy if only
we could let the rock of resistance alone
talk trivia in tit-for- tat, the practiced bat and ball
of common conversation, sanity all bound and bandaged
mummified, the irskome monsters of the mind, truly dead
as well as buried, and where safer is not opposite to sound
– but the river is swiftly rising and we would both be drowned
As therapist, taking the metaphorical view of the stream of consciousness heading underground as I join Jilly’s pick of Jim Harrison prompts for Day 14 of 28 Days of Unreason
PoetryPix 