Trading pride for love April 23, 2013
In her first poetry post in a week, she continues her sad
theme of love at risk, distance and desperation.
This is a
particularly painful read, depicting someone who sees the love of her life
slipping through her fingers and she is helpless to stop it.
Perhaps in the distant past, in poetry long removed from the
web, she may have expressed such anguish. But while she has expressed pain,
anger and other emotions in her poetry over the last year and a half, none
rises to the level of desperation as this poem does.
This despair is so poignant, I can’t help but sympathize.
I’ve been where she is and reading her poem brought it all
back – only in my case, I was the cause of my romantic demise, where she
appears to be someone who doesn’t have control of the situation.
Each of her last few poems has depicted a love affair that
is moving beyond her grasp, although this latest says this literally, saying
how helpless she is in this matter, and how she has to leave it all in his
hands to save the romance or not.
It is not clear from the tone of the poem if he will. In
fact, she seems to have her doubts. This is why she is making this last-ditch
effort to convince him their love is worth saving.
“I place it in your hands, all of it,” she writes.
Then, she gives a possible clue as to who he might be when
she uses the word “midweight,” a boxing term.
This may also give a clue as to where and when she met him
since one of her last published pieces for us was in one of our magazines, in
which she did a feature on a local boxing gym. I recall how great she looked
with her boxing gloves on and standing in the midst of very powerful men. Apparently,
one of them was struck in the same way and struck up a conversation that
eventually led to romance.
The term also plays into the concept of conflict, and the
perception of throwing in the towel, a boxing term for surrendering. She is
admitting defeat, awarding him a victory in the bout of love.
She is stepping back, scared, holding her breath as to the
outcome, something she clearly has done before. So much so that it has become
normal for her to hold her breath and wait for something, if not the intensity
of this love, then of other things in her life.
The poem suggests and even greater degree of separation than
in the previous poems, as she watches her lover grow rather away, more remote, perhaps
just beyond her finger tips, the passion she felt at the beginning, tried to
keep contained in head, acted upon and has since become a mere “idea” and he
appears not to be in the same physical space, “the idea of you, and not the
truth.”
She is giving up the decision making to him, “into those
hands there and not there.” He is still in her life, but barely, and she no
longer has control over what might happen next and she must trust him to make
the right choice, to trust him that he will still b e there to hold her up in a
relationship that she is describing as “inadvertently coveted.”
This brings back to the love affair of the mind, when she
questioned if she should pursue it in reality even though she knew it would
destroy his world, as it ultimately came close to doing, and later, when it she
was faced with a choice of joining him as a couple or keeping her own identity
she ultimately chose herself, a decision she clearly still regrets, especially
now as he grows more and more remote and she is helpless to bring him back. He
must choose to return or not.
She can do nothing else.
She describes her state as “mid fall” and then gives him an
offer, saying he will benefit from her descent if only he will save her. She is
humbling herself before him, a reversal from her previous position when she
chose “I” over “We.” She is casting her ego aside in order to retain love, and
for someone who is as talented as she is, and desirable, not to mention
ambitious, this is a remarkable move.
She clearly shows the depth of emotions she is capable of,
and a deep, passionate love for someone.
And yet, this may well have come too late.
He may not feel the same way as she does.
Her use of “hands” signifies a number of possible meanings,
such as holding her heart in his hands – possibly boxer’s hands, hands that are
like a safety net she needs to catch her when she falls.
His hands are strong hands, echoing the “mid weight” description
of them from the first verse, they are able hands, which may or may not be
there in her time of need.
One can easily see her as a petitioner, carrying her bundle
of concerns and humbly offering them to some powerful figure.
“I place it in your hands… and step back frightened,” she writes.
She holds her breath as she awaits his verdict.
She gives “all of it “to him “if only the idea of him” and “not
the truth.”
Truth is one of the major elements of all of her poetry, or
as she once wrote and I misread, tearing down to the bone of it (or something
like that).
What truth means here remains a bit opaque in that she might
also be surrendering what she knows to be “right and true” in order to appease
her heart.
The poem does not say how he responds but leaves the reader
hanging with the question as to if he will save her or not.
“There is nothing else,” she write, and offers this
surrender, this falling from her perch as a victory for him, he will bear her
and benefit.
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