things to be left unpacked
as you pack your suitcase,
two things to be left aside.
before you depart on holiday.
before boarding that plane to the far moon side of pacific expectations.
before you sail past serpents’ teeth, dive off the edge of oceanic currents.
before you call that lost sister ione in the deserts above reno.
before you emboss that next poem to paper, before you wrinkle it up!
before you pray to ancestors, or burn some cabbage in the pan.
before that mystery of a forgotten romance lays resolved. it won’t be.
before rain becomes like old comfortable shoes.
before the first flakes of snow rebound.
before the last exhaled calm breaths of spring coalesce.
before you close the curtains, feed the cat, turn off the radio.
before the haircut you forgot to get.
before some doctor says, don’t do that.
before you read the fine print.
before the mistletoe expires.
before your marriage vows.
leave aside everything that makes you sad, all regrets, all mistakes,
all the opportunities you didn’t even know you missed. worry not
their abandonment. they endure like ink like valleys have fingerprints.
but they needn’t be packed.
likewise bid well, fondly place to one side, splashed joys and delights,
all the best tastes of tongue and imagining, all those moments when you
thought to yourself, this is the way it is supposed to be. but isn’t.
these things have made longer your heart-bound name.
but you need not carry them. these things are blood.
you cannot walk away, neither are they ever the point of light.
instead, pack whatever else is now left behind perched on toes.
mostly that will be what you don’t yet know, unrealized.
-
give room for willingness.
give room for kind mastery.
some might say, love, itself, yourself, a root tasting soil.
perhaps it is more than any best word will reveal.
no word is real.
maybe it is bigger than your suitcase, bigger than you,
bigger than best intentions, more than buttons require.
what you were given as a kiss with your first breath.
-
take that.
neil reid © july 2011
commentary:
Posting backwards here, this poem actually first of the current handful of poems done, and one of the bigger few furry bears of that group. Slow simmered and time now to let this one go. Not far from some brief travel myself, so this poem is and isn’t related partly to that pending change. The poem is partly another outing towards “story” poems (although mostly by its mass) and part using some mixing of forms for me (everything and the kitchen sink).
Hardest part right now actually is writing this commentary! (Amusing I suppose.) So be it.
And now (Margo) only that one true monster poem awaits (breaking rules), whatever that will turn out to mean for real and me.
bearly audible 
Can’t wait to see all of the bears. Once I get home, I am going to have to come here and go back through your poetry. I have read many of your poems now, but your last several seem to have taken a step somewhere [I don’t know — it’s your map :)]. Without going back and rereading, my mind says these last few are more focused, intent clearer, but I may be talking through my hat [where is that barn?].
For the record, I love this, both content and form.
margo
Thanks again Margo (and safe travel home).
Well maybe we’re all talking through our hats! And a map? Nope, got none of those! Still so busy trying to learn what poems can be, it is mostly uncharted territory. But you do remind me of yet another project (more work to do). Since I take blogs as genuine “publishing”, I should make some effort to more rightly “present” this otherwise heap of poems here.
And only one bear left in the cave for now; a grizzly I think. But I got some real clarity just recently about how to hold that thing – and now it’s just the small task 🙂 of making words!
neil
In all your spare time, right? The redesign of your presentation and making words 🙂
margo
Neil, your list poems are all deliciousness. Breaths. But you know what, I rather miss your story poems too. Maybe it’ll come to bear in the next poem called, Girl, bed and bear. 🙂
Neil, your poems are more then captivating! Thank you so much for sharing. I would say extraordinary is more like it!