James R. Whitley
Bodily
Given the hairline crack in my
bedroom mirror,
I now realize there is a grave
need for concern,
concern about the gross flaw
it--wholly unconcerned,
impenitent--slashes across
every imperfect, yet
workable, reflection, the
inconsistency it adds
to the innocent details of any
image, an undesired
deepening of whatever shiny
tragedies already lie
sandwiched between the layers
of dust and silver backing.
And I can appreciate, now, the
self-indulgent
run of the fracture splintering
the seen thing
into chaos, the troublesome
thread of refracted light,
growing, spreading steadily
until it becomes
the principal focus of the
gaze,
until it is the
something-to-see.
This is the bittersweet lesson
which survivors--
despite their tender scars,
their sleep-altering regrets--
limp homeward from adversity
with.
This is the dangerous
knowledge:
that there's no gainsaying a
bruise,
that there's peril in ignoring
the disturbing
speckled egg recently-appeared
in the nest,
and that any weed popping its
officious head up
in the trusting green of the
yard--no matter how slight
or shy initially--can usurp the
entire field if left unchecked.
James R. Whitley lives in
Boston, Massachusetts. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart
Prize and published in numerous literary journals including The Caribbean
Writer, The Paumanok Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and
Xavier Review.
His first poetry book, Immersion (Lotus Press, 2002), was selected by
Lucille Clifton as the winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. His
second poetry collection, This is the Red Door, recently won the Ironweed
Press Poetry Prize and will be published in early 2004. Whitley is also
the author of two chapbooks: Pieta (Pudding House Publications, 2001) and
The Golden Web (Wind River Press, 2003). |