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Worlds Apart
Signed First Edition Softcover published by The University of Alabama Press
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1987
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4 people want to read
About the author
Richard Jackson
187 books27 followersLibrarian's note: There is more than one author in the database with this name. Not all books on this profile belong to the same person.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 28, 2020
Sometimes, it is impossible to remember
any less than we want —
*
yet thinking how wrong it is to refuse anything after all,
and how, those times we refused each other, we seemed to
disappear.
*
[...] we live in places we imagine
for each other, so that it is all right
that we never go back. I have imagined
a place where we can hear the rain again
before it touches ground, where you can
hear the sounds of your childhood disguised
as the sounds of the cat waiting for birds
to approach the feeder. Most of these things
have nothing to do with us, we like to think,
hoping, really, that we can hide better
than our words that mean so many wrong things.
*
[...] and how love is the most important thing,
if only we knew who to love, and when.
*
This is a poem so reluctant to reveal how it arrived there
or to face the outside world, it tries to talk only
to itself.
[...]
I think it has to do with the way the heart
tries to understand its own losses by those of others.
*
There's always a gesture or word we don't see, or hear,
showing us too late how we might have cared.
*
I cannot imagine not holding you closer than our pasts,
not loving you this way forever, or to think
you would not be there at all, one or both of us
caught in the invisible webbing of a moment we never saw.
any less than we want —
*
yet thinking how wrong it is to refuse anything after all,
and how, those times we refused each other, we seemed to
disappear.
*
[...] we live in places we imagine
for each other, so that it is all right
that we never go back. I have imagined
a place where we can hear the rain again
before it touches ground, where you can
hear the sounds of your childhood disguised
as the sounds of the cat waiting for birds
to approach the feeder. Most of these things
have nothing to do with us, we like to think,
hoping, really, that we can hide better
than our words that mean so many wrong things.
*
[...] and how love is the most important thing,
if only we knew who to love, and when.
*
This is a poem so reluctant to reveal how it arrived there
or to face the outside world, it tries to talk only
to itself.
[...]
I think it has to do with the way the heart
tries to understand its own losses by those of others.
*
There's always a gesture or word we don't see, or hear,
showing us too late how we might have cared.
*
I cannot imagine not holding you closer than our pasts,
not loving you this way forever, or to think
you would not be there at all, one or both of us
caught in the invisible webbing of a moment we never saw.
Displaying 1 of 1 review