Against All Odds
Against All Odds
If one is very lucky and wins
the roulette of the heart,
then, after the wheel’s ticked start-stop,
the slow flap
onto one’s red or black,
and after, too,
click’s echo,
the split minute’s search for perched chips,
one slips into the knowledge
that there is no scoring
against the beloved,
that everything, like day,
breaks,
just as all, like night,
falls,
and there is no point in weeping
whipped wilfullness,
but only in saying
‘I love you,’
when turning about and again
in the depression hips make
in a mattress,
those words a sum
of received forgiveness.
All one need do
is look up to a wire
of spaced sparrows
to see the perfection that is
the universe, often two warming
together,
like you, my love,
with me.
*******************************************
A new draft poem! I call it a draft because I’ve been revising up to a minute or more before posting. It may be weird or rough but hurray!
Explore posts in the same categories: poetry, UncategorizedTags: "Against All Odds", everything like day breaks, how did I get so lucky as to have you, manicddaily, no scoring points in love, sparrow, unprompted love poem
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
ManicDDaily 
February 27, 2014 at 3:40 am
Oh, ‘… a wire / of spaced sparrows…’ I see them.
February 27, 2014 at 4:44 am
Life in the universe is like love in this life — a miracle, an astonishing exception. So in the love poem there is “no scoring / against the beloved” and “no point in weeping / whipped wilfullness”; instead it offers “a sum / of received forgiveness.” Great humility — and power — there.
February 27, 2014 at 2:10 pm
Thank you, Brendan. k.
February 27, 2014 at 6:00 am
It may be a draft – and aren’t they all, really? – but it’s shaping up beautifully.
February 27, 2014 at 11:51 am
Thanks, Rosemary. I’ve so enjoyed your photos on FB. k.
February 27, 2014 at 6:17 am
smiles….its beautiful…i love the soft rhythm in it and you fluidity…from the depression hips make to birds on a wire to two snuggled in….its very cool….
February 27, 2014 at 11:03 am
For me a poem is always in revision, it is a living thing and like an old friend showing up at my door after many years sometime needs we need to catch up on new thoughts and feelings..
February 27, 2014 at 11:27 am
Hurray indeed. I love it. Perfect, “everything, like day, breaks, just as all, like night, falls”. Love the words of love as “perceived forgiveness”. And the comparison to the two sparrows, warming each other, at the end is just delightful.
February 27, 2014 at 11:51 am
Thank you, Sherry. k.
February 27, 2014 at 11:42 am
what a beautiful love poem k. – i much like the roulette image and how you go from there to the birds on the wire…very cool
February 27, 2014 at 11:51 am
Thank you so much, Claudia.
February 27, 2014 at 2:04 pm
Yes, yes, to speak of love so eloquently, sweetly, gently, yet with the wisdom garnered from years of loving; both inspirational & revealing; so personal, so vulnerable; love it.
February 27, 2014 at 2:11 pm
Thanks, Glenn. k.
February 27, 2014 at 4:35 pm
This seemed very T.S. Eliot to me in its measured and intelligent language-not that you used ‘his’ language, whatever that might be, just the intricate yet basic way you spoke as you put this together– it has a warm heart, and a lot of thoughts in the unwinding of its tale. I especially love the split minute and the perched chips, as well as the stand-out lines Brendan quoted, and the sweetness of the soft ending. So good to read your poetry again, k!
February 27, 2014 at 6:51 pm
Love IS weird and rough. Hurray!
February 27, 2014 at 7:18 pm
Not rough at all, but very polished and graceful, with a voice that is so appropriate to the intimate meaning under all this. I very much enjoyed this.
Steve K.
March 3, 2014 at 2:15 pm
Really fine write. I especially like the third stanza, k ~