Outside framing ourselves in cliched tropes of beginnings and endings, of chance and consequence, of pleasure and despair; outside the boxes in which we locked ourselves; outside being and belonging…how do I salvage the sky that has fallen as rain? The sky I see when that freshly scrubbed sunshine appears again is not the same sky. One sky cannot remember. Cannot know. One sky is trapped in the puddle that was once, sky. One of them is real.
I am not sure when reality disintegrated and became an inkblot. Maybe it was imagination that was reset. Maybe it depends on the locus. Maybe the premise itself is wrong. Things are clearer in the night. If you look. If you know. One emotion is the protagonist. Another is the perfect foil. One of them is real.
But our lies were soft. The contrived made it bearable. Filled the emptiness. The blatant untruths wrapped themselves around hard line-breaks and ingrown grammar to birth the poem. The ink-stained aftermath, the inevitable becoming, the way a poem splits into consonants and commas inside your eyes, the music disappearing from its spaces, even that, even that wants you to make a choice. One verse is real. One verse is still unwritten. One of them is real.
cold moon, cold night:
shall we wane till we disappear
like the moon, like the night?
“the puddle that was once sky” is very affirming to me. Life cycles so complicated and so simple.
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Thanks so much 🙂
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I wonder if soft lies make crashing, all consuming realities hurt less. I bet not…
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Just allow one to take one more step on a long journey… endure. I think 🙂
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This made me feel how acute the pain can be when staying in the places in-between. But when there will be pain in the decision making too, there’s not much motivation to move to a more defined situation.
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Thank you, Rommy. You hit the nail on its head… as always!
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Exquisite writing! These lines made a huge impression on me … ‘But our lies were soft. The contrived made it bearable. Filled the emptiness.’ Cheers.
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Thanks so much, Helen.
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I like thinking about the sky falling as rain and the sky as a puddle. Happy that we wane and become full again.
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Thank you, Colleen.
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Living as I do amidst dramatic evidence of climate change, I don’t know that we can salvage the sky or the earth. And sometimes relationships and emotions seem irrelevant. But it’s true we don’t yet quite know which possibility is real.
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Real and metaphorical skies!!!
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Lovely writing, I particularly liked the symmetry or reflection in the piece & the repetition of the non-question ‘one of them is real’
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Thanks so much, Peter. So glad you liked this one. I think the haibun form best suited what I was trying to say!
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Another haibun to kick-start June. I will be posting everyday (hopefully) this month… do stop by and leave some inspiration!
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