Today's poem is by J.R. Solonche

The Eglantine
       

The last word you hear as you leave the room is the word you remember. It is the word that
becomes your shadow for an hour, that shares your shape, that you hear over and over again,
that becomes a bell to warn you of a place without meaning. The last word you hear as you leave
the room entangles you in sweet-briar. You do not notice when the compromises began.
Perhaps you have always compromised. As soon as the dream found a voice. As soon as the
feeling found a form. Nothing is pure, after all. The shell is cool on the shelf. Your shoulders
ache from rowing on the lake for an hour. A dog swam there with his master. The fireflies are
invisible in the hedges. The shelf is cool under the shell. Nothing must happen behind your back.
The world must be perfect and whole. You must ignore the tapping, tapping, tapping on the
sidewalk in summer. You must ignore the wingy whirr in the crabapple tree. You must ignore the
crack of the stair in the dark. We live in such a narrow house. The door scrapes our heads.
The window is our eyes' size. There is something you should know. There is something else.
The mainspring of love wears out, loses its force. It falls behind time, further and further.
It never catches up again. There is something else. Or there are two pleasures only. Or they are
the same pleasure with different faces. Or remembering a face is like remembering the clock.
Was it brass or bronze? Were the numerals Roman or Arabic? Were those angels on top or birds?
Or the average person learns and remembers 10,000 faces in his lifetime. It is not true that if you
do not understand now, someday you will understand. I will tell you what is true. The eglantine
is true.

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Copyright © 2024 J.R. Solonche All rights reserved
from The Eglantine
Publisher
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission