Monday, September 16, 2013

The Big Picture

The Big Picture

There is always more innocence today
than tomorrow. Balladeers sing

Greensleeves, of what it means to wear
green and keep sadness close to your heart,

but only because they do not yet know
the tune for the asteroids or the wars

which are yet a twinkle in some baby’s
eye, he hasn’t even learned to walk yet.

 A young woman stands in her yard
in a little city as the light leaves, feels

happiness rushing through her, and then
past her. She has sixty years left here,

four houses, three lovers, one child,
two dogs, two cats, a piano she will inherit

next month and learn to play in ten years,
and the world hasn’t even begun to blink.

2 comments

  1. I like how you move from abstraction to the minute and the particular.

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  2. I'm hearing that she doesn't see those sixty years full of the same particulars the speaker gives her. I like that ironic contrast. Well, I like the more-or-less truth of it, but it's harsh. But there it is, for all of us.

    Also, I like this a LOT: " they do not yet know / the tune for the asteroids."

    And I like the fact that you don't withhold from us that it's Innocence you want us to see in "Greensleeves" and "balladeers." We'd probably have figured it out, but I don't think you want us struggling there, in some kind of "Show, don't Tell" maelstrom. I wonder if that was a decision you had to make or it just came out that way. In any case, it works, IMHO.

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