Today's poem is by Timothy Donnelly

Public Speaking
       

I'm asked to disprove, while the others look on, that life begins
        by way of invasion, as with a bank heist, for example, only when
the gunmen have ordered us down on the floor, they lie down
        on the floor too, weeping in longform and asking us to embrace them;

or when a meteor smacks into the face of the moon, who's nothing
        if not accustomed to the same, but instead of withstanding
the assault of it, on this occasion, the satellite cracks open, its matter
        intermixing with that of its combatant, and a new topography is born.

But wait, the others will say, you're a mountaineer, you are not
        a geologist; what you climb you don't need to fathom completely
to climb, all you need is to sense it hard underneath you, but lit
        with an earthly sweetness, like sparks that run in a maple's vein work,

or the winks of a sea scallop's two-hundred eyes. If the hands of
        ancestors help you up, it's only in the way they have all your life—
a voice among icicles, memo under pine; your snowshoes ablaze
        as you leap from the cabin into the sublime, buckled into vehicles

no one can see, much less analyze—meaning even when we have you
        right where we want you, it's all been according to plan, the way
a well-placed buttercup distracts the yak of reality long enough to stop
        stomping its heft on top of the puffball you're making your getaway in.

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Copyright © 2024 Timothy Donnelly All rights reserved
from Poetry London
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission