Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
And, as usual, I agree with you, John Richter, but to me, the learning to make fire reference signifies that their relationship is just at the beginning stages.
deep imagination... in that poem love start from beginner and take us to the the different direction of past and future....
I have read your fiction, ‘Surfacing' where you have so meticulously unfolded the alienation of all women. So great is your work. Do you make oblique reference to the concept of alienation through ‘the edge of the forest…..the edge of the desert….the unpainted stair….greatly expressed!
Well expressed thoughts and feelings, an insightful bit of verse.
Congratulations with the great honour of being chosen as The Modern Poem Of The Day. I have read your poems and novels, all scintillating masterpieces. In concised form you can tell worthy poems, most valuable for us as students to read and learn from your poems.
A short but complete poem about Marriage is thus where painfully and with wonder at having survived even this far we are learning to make fire. So the great Poetess has formulated like this. True amazing!
So well penned. Nothing you missed. Everything is important. Yes indeed marriage is not the house but all others thing that made me to house
I am a complete believer! How wonderful and imaginative this poem is. Love is not instant, or expressed by some fanciful feelings that Mother Nature fills us with in her goal to have us procreate. Love is something that comes long after that - something that must be forged by pain and sacrifice - compromise and acceptance. Learning to make fire is to learn to knock the coldness from it. I am in complete agreement with Margaret.