Wednesday, June 15, 2016

"The Dress of One Occasion"

the poetry of A. E. Stallings knocks me out!

here is one of my favorites:

 The Dress of One Occasion 
The dress of one occasion in its box 
Belongs to yesterday and to tomorrow— 
But not to this day slowly turning yellow, 
For better or worse, among the cotton flocks.
 Disembodied now and ghostly pale, 
Mummified in tissue easily torn 
As though the flimsy pattern of a dress,
 It’s packed away—for what, you cannot guess— S
tored perhaps for someone not yet born 
(You cannot see the face behind the veil) T
he day of its occasion growing stale And brittle as a triangle of cake—
 Most innocent and decadent of frocks Because solemn and frivolous—
the fluff That blows away from dandelion clocks, 
The lace of time, that shifty, subtle stuff 
That only time itself knows how to make 
Out of the body’s loom, the velvet marrow. 
One Saturday in May, you thought the blue
 Above your heads was yours to keep and new, 
When really it was something old, to borrow. ... 

A. E. Stallings

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