Philip Kobylarz, Estuaria, Photograph
Weathered
I’m sitting in fog
while sinking into the couch
after the shift from rain
streaking down my face
to drizzle to mist to low-hanging cloud
I struggle within a shrouded view
to sort between
curios to remember ruins to forget
artifacts left behind
and ones best left undiscovered
what is long done
and what is left undone
decades-old pictures once full-color
faded to monochrome puzzles
in misshapen boxes filled with missing pieces
games never played books
without cracked spines movies
in shrink-wrapped cellophane
cards never sent saying I love you
letters never written saying I understand
the squall whose front might lift
my prone body in an updraft
has dissipated everything tarnished
covered with water dust
________________
David A. Goodrum
Review by Jared Pearce
The movement from memory to regret is quite fun here, if that movement can be fun, and I like especially how the poem circles around at the end back to the weather and, the especially fun paradox of water dust at the end. I’m not sure if water dust is the same as mud, but if it is, the movement of the poem is, I think, even more wonderful.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Hide distant things: / the things that are drunk with tears! (from G. Pascoli, Fog.) Sunk in a landscape of personal dissonances, the blurry mess of shortcomings, the indefinite catalogue of strenuous, daily failings: constant reminder of them is the paraphernalia on display on our shelves, the memorabilia we fill our burrows with, each one cueing to a missed opportunity, each one a souvenir of a chance we never really had.
This poem tears the veil on an existential truth: far from being of hindrance, the descending fog and shrouded view reveal our artifacts in their exact essence of smudged, ragged, ill-defined, chained ghostly echoes. And to shipwreck in these waters is sweet to me. (from G. Leopardi, The Infinite.)