not touching by billy collins
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the valentine of desire is pasted over my heart
and still we are not touching, like things
in a poorly done still life
where the knife appears to be floating over the plate
which is itself hovering above the table somehow,
the entire arrangement of apple, pear, and wineglass
having forgotten the law of gravity,
refusing to be still,
as if the painter had caught them all
in a rare moment of slow flight
just before they drifted out of the room
through a window of perfectly realistic sunlight.
(poem from my copy of sailing alone around the room - new and selected poems by billy collins, 2001)
(photo of the pacific ocean by me)
haunting poem- had to read it over and over.
ReplyDelete-dana