Of Those We Started And Unfinished Poem by RIC BASTASA

there are those which we have already started
years back and still unfinished
no matter how we want to and this bothers us
today. we think how and we invoke why.

there are those which we finished those which we
have done so clumsily and we think we have done no justice
to what have been badly done and we think we are disturbed
that we decided that
this should have been undone
that we should go back to a certain beginning
and redo the things all over again
and give it its shape and color and place
that it rightly deserves

these too bother us.
they keep on going back as dreams
nightmares to be specific
when we sleep they become nagging mouths inside our heads
an old woman wearing black begging to be fed a hearty breakfast
a small child so thin wanting to be hugged by your empty arms
a tiny black bird that cannot sing inside a very small cage
asking you to open a lock
a single leaf on a twig of a dead tree asking you
the hush of a sigh so it can fall and finally be free from the barks
sands of time so dry wanting to be wet with rain asking you
even for just a tear from your eye
so as to taste the dignity of its sorrow

the bother seemingly endless on an edgeless time
and space without doors
we invoke the power of the circle
so we can be just like it
something must have no beginning and no end
and it is given us in this sense of
this forgetting

and just like a circle we move on like the way
a circle rolls itself on the edge of a square table and then

we fall on something without a bottom
that vast ocean without a floor