The Voyage

Sometimes I wonder about others

when I am on a voyage,

thinking to myself in the silence.

Where do I have to go, how far away,

to lose this incredible burden:

my talent for doing so much harm.

It is not only that I do harm,

but through my neglect the others

shoulder my terrible burden

and go off on their own voyage.

They go their own way, they go my way,

and I am left alone in the silence.

What happens to them in the silence?

They pass ahead into time; is it harm?

Why do I think any way they go is my way?

They are complete minds—they are others.

Yet, we all make the same voyage,

and to be separate is a great burden.

Not to see you as me is a burden,

a painful wall of immense silence

that causes us to go alone on our voyage.

On the other hand, harm

can also be seen in seeing others

exactly as myself. I want my way.

This is why I run or walk away

with my sack, my mysterious burden

which I hide from all the others.

Do you think they know in the silence

that I almost wish to do them harm,

that I am jealous of their voyage?

Do we protect others on their voyage

by making them believe they own their way?

Or could it be that we’re doing harm,

causing them to carry their burden

through an eternity of silence--

a silence that leads each of us to be an other.

On my voyage I’ll remember a burden

that took me away in the silence,

where my harm is equal to others’.

© Julianne Carlile 

1994

You Go On

You go on, not remembering,

or else don’t care, which is the same,

and I think on the lovely ring

you took back, worn by what’s her name.

Nature consoles me; it has heart,

a heart I did not find in you.

Nature will not leave me apart.

Nature, in fact, is just and true.

The shorn grass falls out in my wake,

the swallows follow on my way,

I resolve to make a mistake.

Before I see the boy, I say,

"I love you," and your voice or God’s,

on the summer wind answers, nods.

© Julianne Carlile

Star-Crossed

I would often ask you for the stories

of how I ended up here

and you would tell me:

I met your grandfather when

he came to work for my parents.

He was a really sharp dresser.

Then you would laugh.

I wondered if you knew what you were really

telling me:

That grandpa had been given used clothes

by your lover, a man you were enamored with

and at first, at the play,

you thought grandpa was him.

(His scent permeated the room;

you could feel him—his essence,

like a star beam covered in gold dust.

But then when you looked,

you saw it was grandpa.)

It must have been really funny,

but what’s really funny is that’s why

I’m here.

© Julianne Carlile

Sonnet for Nicky

Long-haired Chihuahua (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He has a head like a little flower,

A ruff like a lion around his neck;

All day long he dreams of having power—

If he has to bite someone, what the heck?

I really think he likes to dream of life,

What it would be like to be on his own,

To be in charge and to have his own wife—

Especially when I get on the phone.

But it is easier to live with me,

To not worry where his next meal comes from.

I feel for him then, the poor little bee—

The turmoil he feels when I tell him come.

So I live with him and he lives with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

© Julianne Carlile

Ode to a Dog

Happy the person with a dog,

companion of the first degree.

Awake or sleeping like a log,

                they’re fun to see.

Waking you at an early hour,

they always start your day off right,

and do not mind your greater power;

                they will not fight.

To a woman they are a child;

to a man, like an errant son.

Whether they’re quiet or quite wild,

                they’ll take a gun.

They’ll shuffle off this mortal coil

and leave you sad; you’ll miss your elf,

whether you put them in your soil,

                or on your shelf.

Because I do remember mine,

staring, rapt, at a bedroom wall,

where he does now in fact recline.

                He heard my call.

© Julianne Carlile

Beauty

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

couldn’t put beauty on the map.

Beauty is truth and truth is beauty.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

All men seek beauty—

it is said the two words most said by men
before making love is:

“You’re beautiful,”

and yet no one knows what it is.

The destroyer of strong men and their horses,

the fields of flowers go on

but the men and their horses are gone,

until the next trip.

© Julianne Carlile

This poem took second place in the Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge for May, 2014.