Wave Particle Theory by Barbara Mossberg


I let myself be kissed like the man finds the plums in the icebox and eats them and is apologetic

 

but not regretful, there is a difference, and writes the eating plum note of apology but not regret and finds the poem in the note. I am like that, with these kisses some form of poem.

 

In my dreams, there were three kinds of poems made from things that happen in the universe, one was the note on the icebox about the eaten plums, one was tides making a gorge of sand in a huge expanse of river going to sea, the sand crafted into walls, and the tides roiling surf and the sweep of the whole immense movement, that was a poem to have seen it, and one was the love that made a baby, the baby was the poem, the result of tides of human love that powerful, how nature wanted it to be, us swept completely in the experience.

 

I dreamed of loving a baby, mine, and it was that time when I held my child, my first moment of holding someone and feeling part of this swirling tide of being.

 

In my dream, I saw how it was three things, of different scale and form, but all about how poems are made, or maybe, why poems are made.

 

 

Dr. Mossberg, President Emerita Goddard College, Poet in Residence Pacific Grove (CA), humanities activist, dramaturg, playwright, actor, literary critic, and professor (California State University and University of Oregon), founded and hosts weekly Poetry Slow Down (podcast BarbaraMossberg.com) and lectures worldwide on poetry, including as Fulbrighter and former U.S. Scholar in Residence (USIA).