Tuesday

love letter

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no-
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter-
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chiseled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,

But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.
And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I was was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.

I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.
Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.


--Sylvia Plath

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suspect you are in love, Katie Allison. Am I right?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Kate, spill the beans!

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I suspect we never read about any of the really important things on her blog. I sense something's up though. I've been reading it for over a year and my antannae are buzzing.

A Long Time Reader from Marietta

Anonymous said...

My husband introduced me to this poem within the first few weeks after we met and it was exactly how I felt. I had been married before and felt dead inside and he coaxed me back into the sunshine. A beautiful poem.

Anonymous said...

KAG, Is it the Bonnarroo sidekick?

Julie said...

My attraction to screwed up men is my fatal flaw. No question about it...

-Katie

Julie said...

Addendum: Not always screwed up exactly (although some have been that), but inappropriate. That's more accurate.

-Katie

Julie said...

A therapist? No way! He/she would definitely tell me to stay away from incredibly clever but emotionally unavailable men with rigid, preconceived notions about what they are looking for that leaves them ambivalent on just about everything. There would be no more opportunities for me to hang out with really good guitar players with Peter Pan complexes and complicating entanglements. I'd be advised to hang up the phone on fiction writers who make my knees quiver but who never call when they say they will and who have just the merest hint of a lingering addiction to something or another...

Why would I want to give all that up?

:-)

Katie