What cannot be but fear

by Blake Griffin Edwards

Oh, the inane wrestling with
the stupor of fate, debilitation
this sundry tapestry, tattered kinship and death

An emboldened confidence, giving way
daring to be lonely but
to suffer not alone

How the ‘meant to be’ or
‘will’ or ‘way’ may or might
just be another void, easy

Determination. Ah, human sympathy,
with truth can also be suspect
how it often is only curiosity

You dare to urge or speculate
or pray with intonation
Let your intonations be not heard but felt

Wasted sentiment
speak to me
to see my face, my eyes

Come to me
not to feed but to hunger and eat together
not to pour water but to thirst and drink together

Not to dare to sagacity
but to suffer and bear and relish all
Doleful beauty. To live, to dance!

Come here to dine: a cup of indecision
a portion of scrupulous quiet confusion
to lift an ounce of indomitable

Despair into steeping
Joy. Yet I say “Away!”
Away to the charming inventive

Subtleties that fashion this chasmic abyss
the Actor and the Poet.
The actor and The poet

Come toward me
a grief to serve every dreaded ounce of what
cannot be but fear

Does it speak, to feign
to accost, to become some dreaded
accoutrement, or unending desire?

Blake Griffin Edwards is a psychotherapist in Washington State, USA, whose writing has been featured by the American Academy of Psychotherapists, the Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice, the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

ISSUE 88 | SUMMER 2019