Sometimes
Sometimes I can’t swallow truth any easier than a sparrow can

swallow a tractor. Sometimes a sparrow’s view of the world is much

more grounded than mine. Sometimes precise angles of knowing

can make truth feel more acute, and less the degrees of separation

from honesty. Sometimes the most honest truth is rain falling

parallel to your loneliness. Sometimes I wonder which is more true,

today’s rain or yesterday’s rain, and what is more true than a snail

coming out of its shell after rain, or a bear attacking two campers in

Algonquin? Sometimes truth is beyond words, beyond metaphor.

Sometimes we can only love theoretically, although we want to dig

into love as hands into a garden. Sometimes the end feels like the

beginning, and I wish we’d gotten here sooner, so we could have

started before we ended. Sometimes we can’t distinguish the end

from the end. Sometimes snow and rain at the same time cause

confusion. Sometimes loves carries with it an illness of the heart.

Sometimes there is only wood beating in my chest. Sometimes the

mind is a back road, pushing itself into potholes while night hurtles

closer, stars collecting at your throat. Sometimes come morning,

there is only one way to see a blackbird. Sometimes a person’s

leaving looks like arriving, only backwards and for longer.

Sometimes people disappear into mountains and only white space

remains. Sometimes canoes disembark from shore and vow to

return again. Sometimes a storm brings lightning into our lives, and

splits a tree we love in two. Sometimes metaphors for love are

boats, carrying the aftermath of relationship. Sometimes the

aftermath is snow, falling like love from the sky and melting.

Sometimes love gets towed across bodies of water; sometimes not.

Sometimes love, with only one oar, keeps turning and turning.

Debra Franke - Where the Back Roads Take You, Baseline Press 2014.