Poetry

In the Flare of the Spin of Surprise

by Paulette Laufer

 

Poetry, I thought I could walk
away from you but images and words
come up in a surprise and a flare.

It’s not so easy

either the walking away or
the getting back to that
which I never really had
in the first place.

But look:  aren’t the trees
blooming again with fallen snow?

Too often you were like
a vast snow-covered field,
still and crystalline and silent,
not giving up any of the secrets
of the earth churned beneath and behind
the toothpick fences.

And I thought I could

simply put my pen down, shut the door,
go for a long hike but always on the last loop
of even the most unfamiliar trail
I’m startled sideways to find you, hibernating
in the cave of my heart again.

And yet …

Weren’t you always there,
whirring in the background
like a small fan left on in
a summer rental?
I know I never should’ve
bargained for that room
in the first place
but it was all the coin I had.

Words, like love, or so the old adage goes,
aren’t really to be held onto but, like love,
how can you not try to when

a word floats by, spins my ear,
bursts open and I catch even
the merest shimmer of it:

There I am again for a moment,
skipping stones on the river with a first love,
falling into words or are
words falling into me

like snowfall, trees blooming again, or
some wild, forgotten
or imagined kiss.

 

Paulette Laufer began writing poetry in Stevens Point before embarking on playwriting and theater work (Washington, D.C. area many years).  She now lives primarily in Sturgeon Bay, WI, and a recent return to her love of poetry.  Honorable mention (poetry) Wisconsin Academy/WI People & Ideas 2017 contest.