All These Metaphors

A Poem by C. Luke Soucy

It was stupid of me, I know
to redecorate our treehouse
when he was outside cutting down the tree.

Former twinkle in my eye
sometime spring in my step
later a lump in my throat,
he spent more time in the pit of my stomach
than at home in the bottom of my heart.

The less he came, the more I tried
to seek him in the scratching of a pen:

           Writing was a way to win him back, you see
           my Northwest Passage through the floes of ice
           that no one ever promised I could find
           and does not necessarily exist.

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Paysan du Canton de Zurich, Hippolyte Lecomte, 1817

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