Patrick Faller

Attempts (poem)

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by

Patrick M. Faller
in , , ,

I must’ve been difficult to handle alone.

My kind of trouble

makes bones of bodies,

sand of bones.

We used to bury our feet in sand.

Feet feel sand differently.

Then difficulty demanded more of us.

So we dug ourselves up

and moved to Chicago.

It was dark all the time.

We grew a tree in the street,

needing just that sort of miracle.

But everyone went around our tree

without thinking.

Troubling, sure.

But trouble made bones of our bodies

and sand of everything else.

And sand was difficult to handle alone.

 

Image Credit: Ana Grave via Unsplash

Comments

5 responses to “Attempts (poem)”

  1. Miriam Avatar
    Miriam

    Lovely poem Patrick. Evoked images, feelings. Great to read your writing again. Hope all is well in your world.

    Reply
    1. Patrick M. Faller Avatar
      Patrick M. Faller

      Hi, Miriam. It’s been a while, and I hope you’ll forgive this late-ish reply to your comment. I’m really glad to know the poem resonated with you. I’ve been writing one every couple days–often more frequently than that–and posted them to my profile at Medium, where I’ve fallen in with a group of poets produced strong work and offering feedback.

      I hope you and yours are well, too. Your daughter was heading off to university, if I remember correctly. Has she made the move yet?

      Reply
      1. Miriam Avatar
        Miriam

        Great to hear from you Patrick. And glad to hear you’ve fallen in with a group that obviously suits your needs. Things are good here. My daughter’s finished her schooling, yes, but no uni for her. Her choice was to head off into the workforce.
        Hope all is well with you Patrick and life is not too hectic leading up to Christmas.

  2. WHT Avatar
    WHT

    Well done, my friend.

    Reply
    1. Patrick M. Faller Avatar
      Patrick M. Faller

      I would’ve gotten back to you sooner, man. I don’t know about poetry, though; I mean, I don’t know whether it was well-done or not. I hope so. I respect your opinion a very great deal, and so you should know you’ve done a lot to shore up my faith in this little piece. I’ve put a ton of poems up over at Medium and I keep writing and writing them. I’m up to something like 40 blog-published poems now, and I’m starting to think I ought to get on about making at least a chapbook out of them.

      But anyway. Serious: apologies for letting your comment go unresponded to for this long. I’m sure you’re feeling the semester’s-end crunch yourself; that’s what’s got me. I just finished up a batch of portfolios I need to have ready to hand back this coming Monday, and I feel considerably lighter, if still a little uneasy about the grades I’ve given.

      I must admit it’s good to see you back writing after, what, a two or three week break. Your recent post made the kind of impression on me where I was like, “I need to tell him what it was I was thinking the other day, about how I’ve always felt off-balance in the presence of women…” But when I tried to write to you about it I felt stalled by the largeness of the feeling. So I hesitated, and kept hesitating, and eventually gave up and went and lifted weights.

      All of that is by way of saying you wrote another compelling piece. Well done, my friend.

      Keep in touch, man. I hope things are well with you and yours.

      Reply

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