Here is enough

I really do like this 2013 Michael Symmons Roberts collection, Drysalter - it contains 150 poems (all of them 15-lines in length); an amazing number of which are truly wonderful.

Here is one of them:


In Praise of the Present

If being here and now is nothing more
than memory on the fly, then love
is just a trace of having loved, over

and over-recorded, so each new
detail - that lock of hair that mimes
your cheekbone's curve, those blue

ghost-maps beneath cream skin -
becomes a vivid present, and a fix,
a holding fast, a living in

not after. This I pledge: to stay
awake, for death can keep its dreams.
Here is enough, and now, time's alchemy.

So put your book down, it's so late.
I lean in close and say your name,
to print it on the face of night.

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Michael Symmons Roberts (1963 - )

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