So this is what it's like when love <br />leaves, and one is disappointed <br />that the body and mind continue to exist, <br /> <br />exacting payment from each other, <br />engaging in stale rituals of desire, <br />and it would seem the best use of one's time <br /> <br />is not to stand for hours outside <br />her darkened house, drenched and chilled, <br />blinking into the slanting rain. <br /> <br />So this is what it's like to have to <br />practice amiability and learn <br />to say the orchard looks grand this evening <br /> <br />as the sun slips behind scumbled clouds <br />and the pears, mellowed to a golden-green, <br />glow like flames among the boughs. <br /> <br />It is now one claims there is comfort <br />in the constancy of nature, in the wind's way <br />of snatching dogwood blossoms from their branches, <br /> <br />scattering them in the dirt, in the slug's <br />sure, slow arrival to nowhere. <br />It is now one makes a show of praise <br /> <br />for the lilac that strains so hard to win <br />attention to its sweet inscrutability, <br />when one admires instead the lowly <br /> <br />gouge, adze, rasp, hammer-- <br />fire-forged, blunt-syllabled things, <br />unthought-of until a need exists: <br /> <br />a groove chiseled to a fixed width, <br />a roof sloped just so. It is now <br />one knows what it is to envy <br /> <br />the rivet, wrench, vise -- whatever <br />works unburdened by memory and sight, <br />while high above the damp fields <br /> <br />flocks of swallows roil and dip, <br />and streams churn, thick with leaping salmon, <br />and the bee advances on the rose.<br /><br />Chris Forhan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/gouge-adze-rasp-hammer/
