Hello Escritori,
This poem was achieved using various audacious filchings from a range of different places, given a slight twist. I hope I get the atmosphere right. The more extraverted I’m required to be at work: to challenge, clarify or subdue the high energy of others in the internship; the more and more drawn I am to analysing the quality of a person’s silent stillness.
It can tell you a lot about a person. It helps you try them on like a jacket in all kinds of different fabrics per person. I’m sure actors know what I mean.
Some people – you try on their quiet, and you put your hands deep into the pockets of them – to feel the edges from the inside and you feel almost immediately secure. Others you know are just being quiet because they’re not listening, merely preparing their argument and response. You can see them, making tiny, frenetic, micro-twitches.
Some people, you feel out in a handshake – different contours – much more immediate than sitting inside their silence in an abstract way.
I really like Keanu Reeves when he’s just sitting and not talking in an interview. I feel like he is actually listening, and internalising an awful lot, ready to engage, and be impressed and humbled by human uniqueness. Happiness is the work of a moment, contentment is an attitude.
Weekend Vows
In the actions it inspires
There love resides
As powerful as an exodus
Yet as intimate
As a lullaby.
I was not always in your life.
Will you pay me in
The knowledge
And the memories
Of your yesterdays,
To buy
A tomorrow of some kind?
It’s nothing you’ve done
Or employed,
Merely the fact that you’ve deployed
A subtle, strengthening, emotional alloy
The soul-anchoring joy
Of being understood.
The turmoil love seeds within us
Is a germination achieved
In the midst of restlessness.
Quiet. Let’s just… be. Us.
Stay here, now.
Amid the incidental susurations
Of turning pages,
Which tickle
When they brush your arm.
I need you to hear
My weekend vow
Where, anon
The offer of tea
And more of the
Sofa comforter
Is an expression
Of a fidelity
Which you acknowledge gently
Though neither of us will move;
Wanting to prolong serenity.
The neat, round
Wholesome sound of the clock,
And the smell of your coffee
Invigorates this introverts Eden
For you and me.
I have made my vow
And look, beseechingly up.
You raise an eyebrow
Over a softened eye
Smile in spite of yourself
And say so much.
(© Copyright Pola Negri, 12/11/2017.)
Photo by Ember + Ivory on Unsplash
The Escritorium 