PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I liked this poem, and I learned from it---which I will explain in a moment.  I did not like the expletive in the second line.  But apart from that, I was impressed with how much emotive power you have compressed into such a few lines.

   I was, at first, stymied by the rhyme between tumble and bumbles.  I usually quibble at such issues because an accurare rhyme requires that the letters that follow the rhyming vow be eactly the same.  Then I wondered if bumbles was chosen simply to compel the line to comply with the rhyme at tumble; that, too, is another quibble of mine.  And then, the light bulb came on (although, at my old age, it is probably a low-wattage bulb), and it shed light on some issues that have haunted me since 1978.  Those separators that, as the poem says, "allowed gravity to carry us apart" are, when viewed in correct perspective, bumbles.  They are rarely great tragedies of planetary or galactic import; they are rarely even interestimg as drama, except when enacted on soap operas.  On January 9th, 1978, one of the intensest relationships of my life was brought to a crashing blindsiding halt---and I was informed of this halt at a lunch table, in the dining hall of our campus, as we ate our customary lunch with our customary lunch group.  A pall of silence descended upon the table as I was infomed that the "we" that we had been that morning existed no longer; and that two had become just one and one, apart.  For years afterward, I viewed this as a deep personal tragedy.  For decades it has haunted me.  And now, having read your poem, and that marbelous descriptor, "bouncing bumbles" I realized in a sudden serendipitous thought that what had led to that ghastly moment, a moment that I had mythologized far beyond due proportions, was a series of bouncing bumbles that, in a sequence, were greater than the sum of their parts.  Somehow, your poem moved all this baggage of mine, from that incident, into a proper perspective, a reductive perspective.  For more than half a year, I was the laughing stock of our small town, and of our small campus, because everyone knew the silly story, but only I treated it like it was a tragegy written by Aeschylus rather than a bad poem written by me.  Your poem, which is excellent in its emotive power, helped free me of that burden; and for that, I thank you most sincerely and respectfully.