On Loss

A. Diao Lavina

Read the letter. Suddenly sentimental,
Flung the pages and thought of Plato preaching.
Passion isn't some bagatelle, dizzy swooning,
Reckless the despair.

Not the narrow pursuit of evening hunger,
Not rising fire in the hollows of winter,
No timid exercise involving flowers:
Throw them all away.

Simply cancel that intermittent yearning.
Ignore the cellos singing resonant dark
Curdling your hasty and maladjusted heart.
Love is abstract glass.

Forget the almost of a kiss, thickening singe,
The hypothetically astonished fingers on skin,
The eyes which held some consequential yield.
Hush your vain weeping.

But what of passion known is not pain confessed?
And what illusive thoughtless day claims that next
We find no frayed and limping hour at best?
What Plato wanted

Fails here. Perhaps you may achieve cruelty,
Or caged, find pith and soul, frail poetry hidden
In the sway and lurch of marching time.
Alone is a gift

That speaks delight in speech and drains discontent;
It cleaves the difference between wanting
And separation, transcends the myth of past:
All will leave and pass.