WATERS OF MARCH REDUX

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Today, we are to write "...write a palinode. And what’s that? It’s a poem in which the poet retracts a statement made in an earlier poem." 

It is interesting to attempt to write poems when one does not feel like writing. The après-winter away is fast retreating to we're home now and there's the job jar, and we're not even actually there yet. This, too, is process. (This, too, is a palinode of sorts.)

A palinode. Or not. Um, I'm just writing a poem today. Here it is.


WATERS OF MARCH REDUX


I read in the deep click of Online
that when Tom and Elis were splashing about 
in the waters of March she couldn't stand him.
Read or read    
Reed or Red
Everything appears as it isn't 

Is

there: a spark, a flash
green shoots of sunset
there! — and as quickly gone from the horizon

They sing the song, taking turns,
line by line, and she owns it
but it's not her song, or their song, it's his.
There, there, you imagine him saying
and she flicks the end of her cigarette so the ash
kisses his sweater on the way to the floor 
on the way to knowing or not knowing 
where it's going to land
when to cling, when to let go
how to be comfortable in the world.

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