pain arrived, so late tonight,
again,
heavy tread tentative,
no excuses, no explanations,
just arms loaded with mournful smiles,
and stories that reeked of old books
on faraway shelves-
we slid back against the pillows,
reading words aloud that stuck like
unfamiliar food to our tongues,
pain, trembling, so late tonight,
again,
turning pages one by one,
till we were screaming,
tumbling, whirling,
down a soundless gush,
and the lake of unshed tears
flooding the foot of the bed,
rose into a tidal wave,
and we were the last natives
on a submerged atoll,
wrapped in burning flags,
fingertips touching,
waves beating their wings
against our unmoving legs;
pain, stayed, so late tonight,
again,
like a secret lover
who knew the other door,
waiting for the first sliver of dawn,
lips upturned in a salty smile,
stories spent,
shadows of the weeping moon
smudged dark under
unblinking eyes,
again.
THOUGHT PURGE 
Pain as a secret lover—my sister knows it well! Sometimes I wish for her that intimacy were not so fierce.
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I wish I could understand more of the meaning, but perhaps the reader is not meant to..as you mentioned it being tangential.
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Thanks Mary… as with all poetry, a lot is left to the reader’s imagination!!!! 🙂
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Sometimes poetry is more sounds than sense. I think of many of the poems of Dylan Thomas, for example.
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A very intriguing response to the prompt……….the last natives on the atoll, wrapped in burning flags, the screaming the tumbling and, especially, the weeping moon.
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Thank you Sherry 🙂
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Such an intriguing perspective 🙂
Beautifully done.
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Thanks Sanaa..
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‘stories that reeked of old books on faraway shelves’ – how wonderfully your tangent wrote itself…pain is like an occupation of the mind, body and soul whatever form it takes and this poem seems to capture that in many magnificent ways..
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Thanks so much Jae…
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I like the emotion conveyed here, as the image of pain takes me to the refugees ousted from their homeland…
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Thanks Sumana..
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This is beautiful poem, tangential as you say but still full of such emotive feelings.
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Thanks so much Robin.
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This is an interesting look at citizenship. Ive been in this kind of physical pain it is the one time that the minute hand sweeps away concern for others. There is so much pain in our world it is good that there are still people who do reach out to others.
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True Leslie.. thanks so much.
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I am moved by the images here, with pain arriving–moving in with all its baggage and stories. I’m tried to stretch in my imagination to an idea of citizenship and almost can. I don’t see pain here as an intruder/illegal immigrant, though the narrator (and I) would like that to be true. It’s too at home in the burning flags and isolated islands that it visits through its secret door. Wow.
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Thanks Susan… in the end perhaps everyone shares the same set of emotions..joy or pain that connects us all, across and beyond geographic boundaries. In another, we are alone in our world of pain sometimes.. and all other artificial constructs and borders become irrelevant. 🙂
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in the solitary hands, in the eyes alone and the heart that feels the words of dusty old books once treasured and still. written by a hand whose toil of tears and tales of yore wished for eyes like to share in their imaginings.
wonderful write, my friend
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Thanks so much Marco….
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