5 Aug 2020: "Pale Colors in a Tall Field" by Carl Phillips

Pale Colors in a Tall Field by Carl Phillips
Remind me to show you where the horses finally got freedfor good—not for the freedom of it, or anything likebeauty, though their running was for sure a loveliness, I'mthinking more how there's a kind of violence to re-enteringunexpectedly a space we never meant to leave but gottorn away from so long ago it's more than half forgotten,not that some things aren't maybe best forgotten, at acertain point at least, I've reached that point in my own lifewhere there's so much I'd rather not remember, thatto be asked to do so can seem a cruelty, almost; bad enough,some days, that there's memory at all, though that's notexactly it, it's more what gets remembered, how wedon't get to choose. For example, if love used to meanrescue, now it's more gladiatorial, though in the endmore clean: Who said that? Not the one whose face I'vedescribed somewhere as the sun at that moment when,as if half unwilling, still, to pull itself free from the night'sshadow-grove of losses, it first begins to appear. No.Not that one. And not the one whose specialty wasmaking a bad habit sound more excusable by calling itritual—since when do names excuse? Wish around for ithard enough, you can always find some deeper formof sadness where earlier—so at least you thought—meresorrow lay ... I'd been arguing the difference betweenthe soul being cast out and the soul departing, so Istill believed in the soul, apparently. It was that long ago.
from Pale Colors in a Tall Field: Poems Hardcover – March 3, 2020