Today's Poem-A-Day

Poem with Lines from Pierre Reverdy

by Sandra Simonds

 

 

Maybe the world will not be saved.
It will not be saved. Its commerce, its
every case also
moves into its geology
and then that geology moves
into some great exit of slowing
clocks and the history of saved light.

Listen, I'm not crazy. I want you to save
something for me. If someone says
something false, I will tell that person
"you are false" because I am full
of exaggerations and energy
and also because sunlight scatters
across this lake and just one beam
is enough to make my body insane.

The world will not be saved by despair
so we should spend it all on joy, right?
I despair. Does he despair? The desperate
characters walk onto the stage.
The stage a lake the lake a self I staged
The lake the self I staged.
They sing off key like me. There is no
harmony but when the children clap their
little hands, well, neither is there simile.
I washed the dishes; I folded the laundry.
I wanted to walk around this lake
like an innocent.

 *

Sandra Simonds is the author of two books of poetry; her second and most recent is Mother Was a Tragic Girl(Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012). She teaches at Thomas University and lives in Tallahassee,