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30 June: "There Comes the Strangest Moment" by Kate Light

There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free—
what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite
looks upside down from how it used to be.

Skin’s gone pale, your brain is shedding cells;
you question every tenet you set down;
obedient thoughts have turned to infidels
and every verb desires to be a noun.

 I want—my want. I love—my love. I’ll stay
with you. I thought transitions were the best,
but I want what’s here to never go away.
I’ll make my peace, my bed, and kiss this breast…

Your heart’s in retrograde. You simply have no choice.
Things people told you turn out to be true.
You have to hold that body, hear that voice.
You’d have sworn no one knew you more than you.

How many people thought you’d never change?
But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange.

1 comment:

  1. JimboJuly 1, 2017 at 9:45 AM

    I like this poem. I had such dejavu reading this poem. I must have read it a couple weeks ago when I posted it. It reminds me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, so that's always a plus.

    The narrator seems young. Such a young person perspective to think that things will never change. Imagine that, the things people told you ended up being true; the things that everyone but you could see. The narrator seems surprised that she could change. Will this understanding lead to further understandings too?

    I can really relate. I used to be awed by these strange moments that change our lives. I would not have referred to it s beautifully, but I guess it is. It's definitely strange. But after the initial pain or fear, seeing the world better/different is pretty rewarding. Once you realize how unreliable our senses are and how much we don't know, the strangeness just becomes normal. For instance, I'm listening to Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, it is interesting. But nothing really surprises me or feels strange at this point in my understanding of the world and people. Even the newest Radio Lab episode, Revising the Fault Line, wasn't strange. It more just confirmed what I already suspected.

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