Packing
Packing up to leave a home
with symbols scattered everyplace
is like dismantling a poem.
This metaphor is made of lace,
while that one is a small blue vase.
Packing up to leave a home
calls for a steady, leaning pace.
Removing each bright thing, each trace,
is like dismantling a poem.
Words in boxes. Lines erased,
the startling with the commonplace.
Packing up to leave a home
requires a sudden sort of grace,
for keeping feelings from a face
is like dismantling a poem.
Till nothing's left but one suitcase
and all the rest is empty space.
Packing up to leave a home
is like dismantling a poem.
—Kate Coombs, 2011, all rights reserved
Poetry Friday is at Carol's Corner today, so stop by and check out the links!
Image is Edward Hopper's painting, Sun in an Empty Room.
6 comments:
Love the poem, Kate.
And good luck on your move. My job is changing and I had to pack up the school's literacy room (big, fat room of book collections--5 to 30 copies of each book) because we are not going to have a literacy room anymore. Sad day. Hard to weed through what to keep and what to pass on.
Shelley
VERY nice. Seriously, I'm overly critical of poems, but like this one. Villanelles are fun to do, aren't they?
Thanks, Shelley and Ms. Y!
And Shelley, the demise of a literacy room sounds mournful indeed.
Fabulous! You have inspired me to try my hand at a villanelle! You make it look so easy! You picked the perfect image as well.
Best wishes on your move.
Thanks, Mary! I think the hardest part was getting the repeated phrases to line up grammatically with other phrases. :)
Nice poem, and well done! Hope the move goes as well!
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