30 April 2012

Serendipity? Or The Agony Of It All.

You know that phenomenon when you're talking about something or learning something new and very shortly after, the same subject comes up in another context? Is there a name for that?  Is serendipity right?  Coincidence seems too weak a term.
So, I'm sitting around talking with a friend yesterday about the nature of love and loss - as one does. Do you ever love as nakedly, as completely as you do that first time?  Do you ever get over the pain of the loss of great love?  Why, when humankind has been obsessed with such themes for hundreds of years, are we not able to figure out the answers?  Typical Sunday afternoon conversation.  
Ya, I rather dig that I have a friend with whom I can talk about this stuff.
Then, this morning I was listening to the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast on my way to work - as one does.  It was the April 2012 podcast discussing the work of a poet named  W.S. Di Piero .  He reads from his poem 'What's Left', a work about the dailiness of love and the pain of it being gone.
My friend said during our talk, that the worst part is that you just feel shitty all the time.  You go to bed feeling that way, close yours eyes, open them a second later and feel just as bad as the night before.  Been there. You too right?
Perhaps poets exist partly to express perfectly what we already know?  To make us say, "Yes.  That's it exactly."

The days eat into your stomach, knife you
with longing for relief from love
that you cannot leave or leave alone,
from its rings of fire where you won’t
burn down to ash or be transformed.

Listen to the poet read the whole poem here.

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