if I set this globe to scale
as an orange
then we are two dust motes on it–
no, even less than dust
perhaps atoms
on opposing halves and sides
of that orange
and how could that orange
allow awareness
between two very small things
to occur, those odds
expressed in angstroms
as all things atomic are
even the constellations
you might wish to meet me by
differ from the ones
I dream under
impossibility set to scale–
we are less than nothing
stretching that feeling thin
across a bloody ocean
to touch–
you are closer
if I pass through that orange
but matter has laws
I must observe in concrete
if not metaphor–
the orange is still completely orange
and we are still less than dust
drawn by a pull
stronger than gravity
and what drives magnets
I will not give a name to
but still somehow
we are spun fine
across oceans of water and salt
or orange juice
or blood
This is a response to Mike the Panda’s challenge to (this is right from the bear’s mouth and some of it triggered by a typo from me in his comments):
Our new challenge is this. Write a poem using apostrophe, the theme is saudade, and it must include the line “love across a bloody ocean” somewhere.
Yep, complicated, but it was Susan and myself who cooked it and she has promised to take half the blame
Apostrophe: a figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and was able to reply.
Saudade: accommodates in one word the haunting desire for a lost love, or for an imaginary, impossible, never-to-be-experienced love.
Saudade rather lends itself to apostrophic writing so hopefully it’s not too much of a stretch. (and it gave me the chance to say apostrophic like I know what I’m talking about!)
Susan Daniels Poetry 