All I Want To Say by Linda Pastan
It’s a good thing that my poetry buddy keeps me supplied with poems for times like this when I’m lazy and would rather lie on my hammock reading a book all evening than look for a poem.
All I Want To Say
By Linda Pastan
“A painter can say all he wants to with fruit or flowers or even clouds.” —Edouard Manet
When I pass you this bowl
of Winesaps, do I want to say:
here are some rosy spheres
of love, or lust—emblems
of all the moments after Eden
when a pinch of the forbidden
was like spice on that first apple?
Or do I simply mean: I’m sorry,
I was busy today; fruit is all
there is for dessert.
And when you picked
a single bloom from the fading bush
outside our window,
were you saying that I am somehow
like a flower, or deserving of flowers?
Were you saying
anything flowery at all?
Or simply: here is the last rose
of November, please
put it in water.
As for clouds,
as for those white, voluptuous
abstractions floating overhead,
they are not camels or pillows
or even the snowy peaks
of half-imagined mountains.
They are the pure shapes
of silence, and they are
saying exactly
what I want to say.
Very insightful about a long-term relationship, I think.
I especially like her closing image:
They are the pure shapes
of silence, and they are
saying exactly
what I want to say.