The Age of Divestments

for Dorianne Laux

Though you said you never would,

you return as a mathematician,

some suture of Chaos connecting

your parallel selves to the penciled purveyor—

painters, sculptors, actors, playwrights,

all practitioners of the religion of change.

Begin with a question that parents a question

until you cannot recall what the wind was

asking—like gnats up from the sewer

through bathroom drainpipes—we are,

every one of us, looking for light—

looking for a way up and out.

Elliot writes, Poetry is not a turning loose

of emotion but an escape from emotion;

it is not the expression of personality

but an escape from personality.

Poetry, every bit of it, as Ruefle and you repeat,

is a fool’s errand.

To play in poetry’s fields, we must resign

to empty ourselves day after day,

night after night, sorrow after sorrow,

into nothingness, into flute music

from an instrument in skilled hands,

a weaver of spider silk.

I see you in your cubicle,

your brow furrowed over the problem

you’ve been given to solve,

your husband in the airport terminal

looks at his watch, tickets to Paris

in your purse hung next to your head.

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Terry Jude Miller is a twice Pushcart Prize-nominated poet from Houston. He received the 2018 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize for his book, The Drawn Cat’s Dream. His work has been published in the Southern Poetry Anthology, The Lily Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, and The Oakland Review and in scores of other publications. He formerly served as 1st Vice Chancellor of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.