Diptych: My Bracelet by Jim Moore

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 12, 2015   Diptych: My Bracelet   Jim Moore

1   Before going to bed I take off my bracelet. It is meant to protect me. A dancer gave it to me: for decades she has known sorrow and beauty. Beloveds have come and gone. Mountains and forest fires. Lives that might have lived through her, but didn’t. Lives that do still live through her. I go to sleep, protected by her love, even though now my wrist is naked. All of you who have lived with the mysterious succession of love and grief, of dogs and dances, of yoga and tears: all of you will know just what I mean. 2   There is sunlight and a staircase ending at the sky. There are electrical wires, a black cable. Then the sound of the train going away. There is my bracelet made of jasper that Peggy made for me. The river and the sweetness of going down to the river. There is all that darkness rushing under the arches of the old stone bridge. The waiting darkness. The patience. There is the going away: let’s get that straight once and for all. And the new waitress, her hand shaking, the tattoo pulsing at her neck, “And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.”            Copyright © 2015 by Jim Moore. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “For several years I’ve been writing 100-word pieces.  More recently I’ve been putting them together in groups of two and three. I don’t see them as sequences, but rather as companion pieces, the way that diptychs often work. The idea comes originally from the paintings of Michael Venezia who places blocks of painted wood next to each other. Proximity is a godsend. The quote is from Wallace Stevens.” —Jim Moore   Jim Moore is the author of Underground: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2014). He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.   Photo Credit: JoAnn Verburg Most Recent Book by Moore   Undergroud: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2014) "forgetting something" by Nick Flynn "Losing Track" by Denise Levertov "This Deepening Takes Place Again" by Emily Kendal Frey Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038