Deflection

     And then the pain subsides or is 
     deflected, so you're suddenly
     distracted by the play of light on the quilt. 
     Not that it vanishes, but it becomes a thing 
     you've misplaced in some closet 
     or abandoned on the curb
     before leaving that old city forever
     and then thought better of and tossed
     into the suitcase but haven't yet
     unpacked. It's almost a comfort, 
     or at least neutral, or set back
     into a realm you can't begin to 
     fathom without hours of study, a shelf-full 
     of reference books. Not that it's not inside you, 
     a core, a knot, because it's what made you and also
     what you've been resisting. Without it, what
     would you be? Nearly lonely, nearly 
     someone else entirely. It's like a clingy
     friend you'd like to be rid of, but you can't 
     turn away from her particular 
     awkwardness or self-absorption
     not out of loyalty but because
     she loves you and knows just how you are. 
     Or your own reflection, wan, exhausted yet
     unswerving. So you feel for a moment
     as you do after an illness, groggy,
     weak, stumbling into the kitchen, 
     the sun blithely spilling 
     all over the table, the floor, the glittering cups 
     someone has already begun setting out. 


     Ann Keniston
 	

     
     *         *          *
     
    
     about the poem:

     "I drafted this poem after trying several times to write poems that
     weren't deflections at all.  Focusing in on and trying to identify 
     and name the source of the problem wasn't working for me, and then 
     I did have a moment when the light was on the quilt and I felt a 
     sense of serenity.  So I tried one of my favorite exercises: writing 
     the opposite, starting from the place that seemed most opposed to 
     what my first impulse was as a writer.  And this poem followed 
     relatively smoothly.  Toward the ending I was able to use (finally) 
     the image of the clingy friend, something I'd been playing around 
     with for years but had never been able to fit into a poem that worked."



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