Poetry Series, Fred W. Feldman

The Concept of Love, Given Up

Fred W. Feldman

Like when an ornament

known since early childhood,

aged and treasured monument,

falls off the mantle and breaks

into concave pieces like an orange peel,

or a picture of a globe cut out and

made to look like an orange peel,

and smaller shards sharp as crystal,

are all scooped up and thrown away,

the mass fluttering the trash bag wings

sliding into the mouth and hitting the bottom

with a thump, causing a brief burst

of plastic scent and rot,

styrofoam and molding oranges.

The initial shock of something

so hallowed turned to junk

belies the ease with which it is

soon complacently forgot.

Forgot so: slowly –

like a drip, accomplished in the

slip of a second, moment,

too instant to be catalogued.

no more point, no more reference,

no more entrance, a book at the library

about to be withdrawn, knowledge

on the verge of lost, the last tip

before the precipice, that which

Is no longer found but stumbled upon,

that rare return of a long gone

amber drop is more surprising

than that it ever was forgot.

That relican amber drop, which is,

like Pytheas said, the excretion

of the sea, or, if Nicias is to be

believed, excreta hardened by the sun,

and for scientists a coffin glass for pests,

that lingering trace of a memory that

was there and then went unfulfilled

(and no memory can ever be fulfilled).

That old cigar smell in the cushions,

the perfume and buttsweat worked into

the fabric and wound into the springs.

Everything left from those here once

who ran their race and ended their contests.

Names kept in a census sheet with cracked

yellowed pages kept in the Borough hall and,

before they were lost in the fire, seldom browsed.

A relative heard mentioned only once,

at Christmas, when your uncle was a bit drunk.

A drop from the highest roof-beam

that plinks upon and wets your forehead.

An old dream remembered for no reason

while picking up a book that fell.

The drip of nostalgia off of fingertips,

the chipped rouge on sentiment’s nails

that turns a loss into a loss. And

you used to wonder how it happened

that someone becomes unaware,

but now you know - or you don’t know –

but you see it's there, which shows it’s not,

as if you saw the disease through an inch of health.

As if you saw your waking life from within a dream;

as if the holographic trace, for a moment, flickered into view.

In such suddenness, the bauble is remembered,

Placing itself into the mind unencumbered

The old thing working itself back into mentation

And creating a melancholic collocation:

With the memory comes a hope once held

A hope from younger years, and since dispelled.

Can it be an absence if it was never there?

Can it be an absence if it was nothing but

A patch of carpet, undisturbed.

A soothing voice you never heard.

Traces of a thing; a concept lost –

Traces of a mind you never crossed.