a paradise within thee, happier far

"tracy k smith once told me i should strive to end poems by opening a door outward not closing one and now it happily haunts every poem i try to write"

Phase One Dilruba Ahmed

For leaving the fridge open last night, I forgive you. For conjuring white curtains instead of living your life.

For the seedlings that wilt, now, in tiny pots, I forgive you. For saying no first but yes as an afterthought.

I forgive you for hideous visions after childbirth, brought on by loss of sleep. And when the baby woke repeatedly, for your silent rebuke

in the dark, “What’s your beef?” I forgive your letting vines overtake the garden. For fearing your own propensity to love.

For losing, again, your bag en route from San Francisco; for the equally heedless drive back on the caffeine-fueled return.

I forgive you for leaving windows open in rain and soaking library books again. For putting forth

only revisions of yourself, with punctuation worked over, instead of the disordered truth, I forgive you. For singing mostly

when the shower drowns your voice. For so admiring the drummer you failed to hear the drum. In forgotten tin cans,

may forgiveness gather. Pooling in gutters. Gushing from pipes. A great steady rain of olives from branches, relieved

of cruelty and petty meanness. With it, a flurry of wings, thirteen gray pigeons. Ointment reserved for healers and prophets. I forgive you.

I forgive you. For feeling awkward and nervous without reason. For bearing Keats’s empty vessel with such calm you worried

you had, perhaps, no moral center at all. For treating your mother with contempt when she deserved compassion. I forgive you. I forgive

you. I forgive you. For growing a capacity for love that is great but matched only, perhaps, by your loneliness. For being unable

to forgive yourself first so you could then forgive others and at last find a way to become the love that you want in this world.

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Check out audio/transcript of poet Pádraig Ó Tuama reading and discussing today's poem.

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