The Move

This is actually my own favorite of all my poems, though it has not fared well in workshops. Perhaps I like it because the language and images are both exactly what I meant, and yet startling, even to me. And perhaps others dislike it because it is merely peculiar for them when I express an extreme response to something simple....

Unplug the dusty telephone connector:
arrange this shift in the stars’ patterns
Sharp edges grow from space divided in two

Find the pink receipt for the rental truck.
I stand in the next room, not listening:
the piano movers take away their ancient gift

The embedded tearing hooks of years.
I turn slowly widdershins
in this room that all my muscles know

dusty shelves, the brown chair, clouds of papers
begin to change:
I see them grow more deeply grained, more solid,
they fling at me the space they occupy,
have occupied.  Hard-won,
they thought
safe: reproach me
with all that should have happened between us.

dark flash lightless lids

I pull coldly away,
pick up the first box of all my books
and step through the finally open door.

[Los Angeles, 10/8-16/92]