Poetry: Giving

July 12, 2021 – Los Angeles: Dean Blehert is a Virginia poetry teacher, poetry editor and has had seven poetry books published.

Giving

The featherbed, we say, “gives,” meaning

it accepts one’s shape. Water gives (ice doesn’t).

Air gives. The givers give way, wrap themselves

around us, shape themselves to us, receive and

release us easily with a sigh or kiss

of gentle suction or a rustle of sheets

or a smile in brimming eyes.

What can you be given? Apparently yourself,

or your own form shaping another,

apparently the right to be part of and

separate from another.

What you can be given

depends on the gentleness

of your asking: If you hit the water too hard,

it becomes stone. If you force yourself

through air too fast, it shudders, splits,

jolting you, claps together behind you (BOOM).

Violence shatters whatever opens to embrace you;

splinters stick to you; the violent never have

anything whole, never leave anything

wholly behind.