ManicDDaily

Before Ever Hearing of Plato (And Frankly Even After)

The time was once upon a
and the place the space
between her bed
and wall, her head
and torso wedged
between box spring and
plaster.

Can a human being be
the gold ring that is found
in the fish’s belly?
That ring, long lost,
that redeems an all?

The mannerless dust fingered
her nostrils; she sipped the air
as if it were a glass she were forced,
but thrilled, to swallow–

How worried they would be,
if they would
but look for her–
she imagined their alarm,
called it love,

though heard their voices leaf soft
as turning pages down
the hall, the changing of
a channel.

But this is not a poem
about love, there for the looking.
This is a poem about
the love of shadows–how sometimes
all three of your wishes
are to be
the mouth of your own cave–

how pressed against
some wall inside your head,
some time once upon a,
you love that dim,
that flickering,
that dance–how she
certainly did.

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A poem, much revised but still, I guess, a draft, for Corey Rowley (Herotomost)’s prompt on With Real Toads to write about something you might think about in a cave.  For some reason I thought of both this scene and Plato’s Cave (from the Republic).  The drawing is mine; all rights reserved for it and poem.  Have a good weekend.