Erosion (Poem)

Erosion

We hurt,
and it's immediate:

the mandatory evacuation
of words after the words

loosed in the suffocating black
of the storms we've weathered

together. What we know
of failure is loss,

not poetry
but the poetry of the heart

stilled into its flat line
once love's been clipped

by the cutting phrase,
where the harm's done

sufficiently below the radar,
building against what holds

back till the pressure,
too much, lets go.

We're privy to it now
as before: the cloudburst incoming;

practice watching each other
recede, like the moon

before the morning's flash of light.
We hold the mirror up, see

how it reflects the effort
we exhaust

saying our words to ourselves.
I can and do forgive.

Let me put one hand
next to the other,

then you do the same.
It's a way to work

the messiness of mud
after it's heaved, before it's hardened.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
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I wrote this poem for this week's Random Acts of Poetry at The High Calling. This week's prompt is "forgiveness". Go here to read Thomas Turner's post on the subject and to drop your link for RAP. Contributions are due by noon tomorrow, April 6, to be considered for inclusion in Friday's wrap-up feature.

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I offer this poem to the One Shot Wednesday event at One Stop Poetry, which each week invites poets to share, read, and comment on each other's work. Be sure to visit the site late Tuesday afternoon and every Wednesday for links to the many contributors' poems.