Thursday, October 16, 2014

The Uneaten Feast

Every so often, everyone needs a good cry. Not necessarily because of any one thing, although those are good, too, but every once in a while, after a lot of little tiny things build up and build up, sometimes you just need to let the dam go and let the tears out.

Well, I hadn't had a cry in a while, and this morning, I was thinking (quite randomly, I have no idea why) of a friend of mine, Shannon, and suddenly there are all these tears on my face.

So I stood in my room for a while, in the gray of the morning (it  had to have been about seven or so) and let the tears out. I didn't really have a reason for it, other than that I missed Shannon, and all the other people that thinking of Shannon reminded me of, and it occurred to me that people are a bit like Champagne bottles. Life shakes us and shakes us and then with one shake too many the cork comes flying out. Waste of good Champagne, usually. Needs to be drunk right away, if it doesn't all get lost in fizz.

I didn't have anyone to share champagne with this morning, which might have been part of the reason I lost my cork, so to speak. How much of who we are and how many of our gifts get lost in fizz when we don't have someone to share them with?

Hence the poem. Haven't written a poem in a good long while, but here it is. It's called The Uneaten Feast. I suppose, on a second read, it could be rather innuendo-laden, but it's really meant about friendship.


Like a cask full of spirits
stoppered to keep them in
so is a human heart straining its staves.

The sky was gray and the rain was soft on my window
and as the sky was weeping so I was weeping

I am a cask that has not been tapped
I am a drum stretched too tight
I am a loaf that waits to be split
I am a candle that has not been burned.
I am a stone turned in a strange river, and no other stone knows me.
I am a feast at which no friend eats.

The wine in the cask is rich with waiting
and the heart in me is weak with wanting
Take a chair at my table and let us drink together
And the warmth of my spirits will be warmth for yours.