The beautiful world

The Rival

“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrows.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; your sis unaffected,

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum, you have here,
Ticking your fingers on the table, looking for cigarettes.
Spiteful as a woman , but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abases her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.

Portrait of Sylvia Plath

 
Your dissatifactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through,the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

NO day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.
–—-Sylvia Plath, writer and feminist

Tucked in a knoll in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Photograph copyright by Barbara Mattio  2013

My orchid is in bloom!
Photograph copyrighted by Barbara Mattio 2013