The way it gets to that sad conclusion, Sheila. The past that now is armour. &, & under that, empathic knowing in the narrator.
Here there is a past, an inner life lost; in some =, there never was one…
Doug
> On Oct 30, 2018, at 8:19 PM, Sheila Murphy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I knew before I knew
> the harsh veneer
> resistant to artillery and brambles,
> and feelings that deflected
> any urge to reach the soul.
>
> I knew before I knew
> that tenderness had long dissolved.
> A history of broken bones re-purposed showed
> the mismatch between body and a heart.
> And thus a practiced kindness
>
> perhaps to make a living,
> softening the absence of interior
> there to shield the present from
> a vivid past, the haste
> of losing how it might feel to be alive.
>
> Sheila E. Murphy
>
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Douglas Barbour
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https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Listen. If (UofAPress):
Someone to talk to, for God’s sake, some-
thing to love that will never hit back
Phyllis Webb
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