Like Life Itself

A poem based upon a reading of Anna Karenina

Photo by LucasVphotos on Unsplash

~after Leo Tolstoy

1.
Forget yourself and live
within the needs of time,
you know what you want to know,
that free will is an illusion,
so let the children play with pistols.

Life is like a quadrille
when you’re waiting to dance
the mazurka, an unrequited
desire for sleep, the gaze
of a woman through a shop window,
mannequin in black velvet

unreachable

as a piebald mountain,
patches of snow
in the shapeless dark,
hazy cloudbank vapor veil
draped down the rock
like lace and tule
caressing a dancer’s spine.

We live in the presence
of such mountains
we never intend to climb,
but the verdant contentedness
of the valley
can begin to feel morose,
and so.