THIS

Mom is not coming home.

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She's gone to a better place.

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It was well worth hanging around

To spend time with her.

I don't regret it; but she's gone,

And the nest has dried up in the sun.

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The tree is blasted with lightning.

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The force of it knocked me to the ground,

And I've been lying here,

Watching my thoughts go by

Like clouds in the sky,

Wishing, fervently wishing,

That the lightning struck me,

Killed me instead, killed me dead.

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This is no way to live,

And no way to honor her memory.

She wanted better for me,

And I always disappointed her,

Though she was ever too kind to say so.

<>

I'll never stop feeling

This sadness,

This loneliness,

But there is beauty in

This solitude

I never beheld

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Until this everlasting now,

Until this neverending today,

Unto this infinite tomorrow.

<>

I must go,

Be the weary traveler again,

The fleeting shadow that falls

Across culture but never lingers

To be caught in its bubbling morass.

<>

I must be free from this

So that I become this.

***** * *****

Commentary:

If we consider the title anagrammatically, we can come to understand how one might turn good to bad or bad to good. Everything turns. Every whole, every outcome, every journey, and every destination, is ultimately made of the same matter, though we might remark that it does, after all, matter, even when it doesn’t.

The poet’s task is to take matter and make it matter.

What’s the matter? Don’t you understand?

Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Fare thee well!