Donovan White: A Poem

Deaf first

We’re left without connecting strings -
A painting without solid lines
Whose clash of color thins to wine.

A fog enshrouds a blue Monet
Where waterlilies leave wet feet
And all else fades in gray retreat.

It did not all, does not all go
At once, or even bunched or paired.
It goes in chunks, mad cow despair.

The rest will not work just quite right
A synapse fails into a gap
Where meaning has no shape, runs flat.

But not just deaf, the rest go fast -
The sight, the taste, the touch, the smell -
And leave behind a fractured hell.

The hidden sense that lies in clouds
Where scented arm and tremored hand
Stretch out to clasp a frenzied strand,

We only lose the ones we love,
The rest slip off unheard, unseen.
What’s left is jangly space between.

* * *

~ Donovan White lives in West Townsend, Massachusetts. This is his first time in Elegant Thorn Review.