BEAUTIFUL PRISON

This is what you wanted me to know.
Why we met at your home
when your husband was gone,
the gate left down,
its barbwire twisted in the trench
of the borrow ditch.

We sat on separate couches,
between us the fireplace
where you often gazed alone,
and the faint shadow on the oaken floor
where firelight and moonlight
no longer tell each other apart.

You said
"He makes real what's in my head.
I do not deny myself to him.
I'm tired of there not being enough of me.
I see no end to any of this.
I'm afraid I've built a beautiful prison."

Then you said that you spoke too much.
I knew I said too little,
as the pittance that passes for wisdom
slipped away from me
and we both fell silent
and knew it was time I left.

Somewhere in Kansas
at the top of the world
where the earth shatters
into the yellow shards
of the Smoky Hill River country,
I remembered Lao Tzu.

"Clay is thrown to form a pot.
Because of its emptiness, the pot is useful"
And I don't see a prison
but the curves of a simple beautiful vessel,
our hands muddy with clay,
the pain diminished

by how empty
we can stand
to be.


© 2002 by Richard W. Todd

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