I first read this a few months ago, and it's taken me a while to decide whether or not I like it. And I've decided that while there are a couple bits I don't like, I do like it very much overall.
It's longer than what I usually post here, but hopefully worth it.
Forehead by David Rivard
I love you
I know as much as anything
for your courage
so companionably invisible
as it is
that it passes mostly
as simple
good sense. I don't mean you're
practical at all- god forbid-
only persistent
as far as dying brothers and cold calls
are concerned- not violent,
not weak, but like a lantern afloat on a wave
open if necessary
to sinking your light
offshore. Onshore
I am as you would know
strongly sometimes
impatient & inside a swarm of loud thoughts
self-absorbed & locked-up.
If you were to die
who would remove me
from those thoughts?
When you lean your forehead
against mine
what you hear inside there
are all those
sounds likely, vibrations
like windowpanes rattled by headland squalls
or bullet trains
late forever & loaded down
with passengers green
as hoodie-wearing witches,
I lean my forehead against
your forehead
gently knowing both
will shortly vanish.
"First of all," says Virgil, "find
a protected place
for the bees
to make their
honey, a place that's
safe from wind."
I think I need to lighten up because the thing that originally bothered me about this, and he does this in other poems I've read, is the use of '&' instead of 'and'. What's that about?
Now that I like it, I don't know why it took me so long to come around. I remember the 'dying brothers and cold calls' line felt too specific, like it shut me out rather than bringing me in, but I don't feel that way about it now. The part that kept me coming back was 'like a lantern afloat on a wave/open if necessary/to sinking your light/offshore.' I thought that was a lovely image and a wonderful way to think about courage and I think the whole thing is very beautiful and vulnerable and tender.
But what do you think?
I found this in the July/August issue of
The American Poetry Review and as far as I know it hasn't been published in a book, but Rivard's two most recent collections are
Sugartown and Bewitched Playground.