After re reading her poem about borrowed lives, I went back
to a poem she posted in the heart of our conflict last June, even though there
are other people the might be better in expressing similar themes.
The poem she posted on June 1, 2012, however, seems to fit
in with the idea of moving on, leaving the residue of her old life behind so
she can continue to invent a new life.
While I wrote about the poem after she posted it, a year’s
study of her poetic works changes my previously cynical approach I had back
then.
In what might fall under the heading of “It’s more trouble
than it’s worth,” her poem depicts her standing near the sea at night, breeze
blowing through her hair, aware of that “it” is everywhere around her, around every
corner. She can see it waiting, “harnessing all tis strength by taking what she
didn’t know she gave.”
The allusion suggests that this person or thing feeds off
her like a leach, and if she does not get ride of it, she won’t survive -- although
it is also about surrendering, giving up something that clearly does not
support who she is and what she needs.
Implied, if not said, is the idea that by releasing this
thing to the sea, both it and she area better off, the sea being symbolic of a
number of things, not least, regeneration and rebirth, as well as endless
opportunities, and for her, she only realized her need to be rid of it when she
knelt aside the seat and left this thing for the waves to carry away.
Love, affection, tied to an extreme sense of regret (and hope
for something better, regret and relief at the same time, having resolved
something without the kind of drama she had faced in the past (a scary thought
looking back a year later on how everything she had hoped to send out to sea continued
to cling to her, and would ultimately force her to be less gentle – though in
truth, even her most ruthless poem (even the one in which she forgave me) continued
to hope for a peaceful solution.
At this point with this poem, she was not yet willing (and
perhaps not even able) to shed the shell she had borrowed to continue her life,
still seeking to find a use for the life she had adopted. But again, in retrospect,
it is obvious shedding this shell was a foregone conclusion, largely because “it”
would continue to haunt her until she did, when she would have no other choice
than to seek a new shell to live in.
What strikes me hardest (and causes the most regret) is just
how tender a poem this is and reflects something of her inner self I had not
previously seen, a person behind the mask looking to get out of a bas situation
without causing someone else pain.
This is not the ruthless opportunist she tried to project in
some poems such as trickle up and may well explain the inner conflict she
suffers when she tried to live up to the personal of a street-savvy person when
down deep she is something else entirely.
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