portion of the artwork for Ken Poyner's poetry
The History of Marriage
Ken Poyner

1.

There is the way the land rolls up.
You at the center.
The objects around merely objects.
Your recognition dazzling.

2.

Outside the bats are weaving the dark
It seems, it seems
But this year there were so many
Insects, and the life has to come out of them.

3.

My love, I am a waterfall
That wears away the rock marching
Backwards, upstream, inching
To the source, intending unrelated destruction.

4.

You at the center. All things
Have gravity. To create orbits they need
Only smaller things close, or equal things
And the impetus for a mathematical, uninhabitable center.

5.

This day begins as though a man
Opening his hand to bread, or a woman
Saying Here, I am like the land,
Filled with objects
, recognizable, fertile, centered.

6.

You begin to see motion in everything.
The speed at which life leaves a body.
Signs of change in the land, the day,
The insects covering the window.

7.

Our orbits are our concern alone.
One planet, its land and waterfalls and days
And nights of minute, ill considered life.
Predator and prey. But there is more.


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 32 | Spring 2011