Letter To A Lost Love From A Tiny Knotted Heart

I was reading Irving Layton’s love poems, listening to a Leonard Cohen you-tube video ‘Come Healing’ drinking a steamy cup of double bergamot Earl Grey tea when this poem materialized.  The title came to me, equally inspired by a title of one of Layton’s poems and a small lyrics from The Hip’s ‘Fiddler’s Green’.  I mashed them together and started to write and I almost felt like it was impossible to stop but it had to end somewhere.  Interestingly enough, I started out peacefully and the more I wrote the angrier I got.  Perhaps there were some residual remnants of lost love I hadn’t considered when I put all of that away?  Nevertheless, it was an intense writing experience, to feel myself go from zero to angry, feeling it mounting, aching in my bones, spreading through my organs and flushing my flesh.  I went from a woman sipping tea to a gladiator ready to destroy but then with the mention of soup and the possibility of dessert soothed the rage and I retired the poem at just the right time.  It’s raw and unedited and out in the universe how.  It isn’t meant to be karmic or boastful or begrudging, just cathartic, serving as a reminder that I moved through some heart trauma and came out on the best side of a bad situation.  And while I will never fully understand the past, I wholeheartedly acknowledge that this moment is all that truly matters and the things that are to come.  Good things. 

 Letter To A Lost Love From A Tiny Knotted Heart

Irving Layton urged me to write to you

I was reluctant to cash in on old love’s dividends

I am just a timeworn poor poet whose only wealth

is the weight of words and I fear that I have

expended plenty of them in your precious name

for love for leaving for anger for sadness for forgiveness

words equivalent to the number of tears pooled on my pillow

undeserved exultation inexcusable passion unjustified umbrage

I am only writing to you because Irving Layton was adamant about it

I no longer wish for you or understand the unbridled attraction

I refuse to recall the fire of your lips nor the heat of your instinctive touch

nor the taste of your tongue and the few warm moments  composed

of madness or fever amplified by wine by denial by inflamed reason

Leonard Cohen mentioned we were nothing more than tenderness and irony

divided by naiveté plus deceit your trickery ensnaring me into your web

without the intention to love me feed me keep me safe from harm

in many ways now you are nothing more than an elapsed rhyme a cartoon

character a figment of my overactive imagination a pipe dream a ghost

Leonard Cohen told me that you would turn me away shun me when you were

finished toying with me sneering if you pass me by you are talented at

passing me over especially now that you read the book and did your research

to determine how Venus and Mars co-exist you can’t commit to anything

without reading how do it first or without a protective nudge you lack guts

you lack courage you lack freedom to be to live to rejoice without instruction

you are a boy full of fear held back by maternity by obligation to God by insecurity

I lack the desire to accept garnished affection I reject the notion that you broke

my heart into a million little pieces and scattered them so easily in one fell swoop

Irving Layton reminded me that my work has been praised by international critics,

acclaimed writers and has one prizes accolades stronger than your hatred for me

I cannot say how you came to loathe someone who loved you so sweetly

someone who would move Heaven and Earth to prevent you from slipping away

Leonard Cohen said if you ever came near me again I should push you off the

balcony of my high-rise and watch you fall in slow slow motion down down down

where you belong with the bugs and the snakes and the worms and the bottom feeders

from above looking down I will pose framed with a sense of purpose and audacity

and I will feel victorious just like you did looking down at me while I wept

Irving Layton said he would buy me a hot beverage and a hearty meal when I am finished

writing you this letter after I fold it slip it into an envelope seal it and send it off

I am going to sip a fragrant pot of earl grey tea and devour a bowlful of potato leek soup

laugh and write and live a full life and if I’m lucky Leonard Cohen will buy me dessert.

**

For the rest of my Wednesday afternoon, I plan to drink more tea, work and in my down time, peck away a little more at my new story that I can now reveal the title of, ‘Half Windsor Knot’.  I’m excited to see where it takes me.  I’m three and a half pages in and I know my stories don’t tend to be long and I don’t put any expectations or caps on word count. I just like to see where they go and who I meet.  I will keep you updated on my progress.

Dinner tonight with some friends I haven’t seen in a really long time.  I so look forward to sitting with them and catching up.

Today’s kindness challenge, get in touch with someone you haven’t seen in a long time, give them a call, text them or drop a line.  However it is best for you.  You’ll be glad you did and it will delight them to know you thought of them today for no other reason than just to say hello.

In propinquity,

Nic