Response

Perhaps because I have been unknowingly baptized into the Catholic faith recently*, these are all about response. Mine, anyway.


Light, or years later
aaaaaaaEs en corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-- Pablo Neruda

Forgetting is only so long, Pablo
as it takes to forget.

Yet, if I regret my silence then
would you, that last sad poem?
and if this should have kept us
nights begrudging the stars their company,
the wind its infidelity--

What now, but certainty
of love and lament, their brevity,
and the fact of distance
between sight and star?
(Look now, how cold they are.)

Let the wind blow where it can feed
Time will take only the time it needs.


That Secret
aaaaaaaHow do they do it, those who make love
aaaaaaawith out love?
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--Sharon Olds

Sex I've had, and more often good
But love I've held at arms' length.
My elbows unlock, I wish they would
That I might hold and be held if it meant
Even better sex, like the stories could
Tell--that is, if truth were their bent.
But older now, I can only conclude
These books, they've lied to us women.

Still a drink or two, of wine, I think
Will get me, at least, to your bed.
There's no need for the dance, or romance--
Some sheila (Or was it Sharon?)
Claimed the chase as pure religion--
Sex without love: I take what I can get
So don't worry about my rep.
That secret's out, and shouldn't be kept.


-----------------------------------------------------------
*
I was at Easter Mass, for the first time, last Sunday. I had no idea there would be a renewal of the the baptismal vows. Honestly, it felt like a mass wedding, with everyone saying I do all at the same time. And who was to know that the girl on the third pew has never (and I mean never) been baptized in the Catholic faith? in any faith for that matter? Well, that secret's out now.

I could've walked away, I know. But welcome is welcome. And it felt right, on both sides. I just feel silly, thinking all the people in the Church that day were my, well, kinakapatid or something. Haha.

And perhaps because the only place the holy water hit was my left hand, I can stop feeling guilty about wanting to write, and write about, all these things. Poetry, after all, is not a luxury, as another Lorde once said.