1978-09-27 The unraveling of Helen O

What is all this to me?
What am I supposed to see … to learn here?
That I loved someone, briefly …
and then watched her unravel
and sift away like sand?

Manic/depressive …
driven to the ends of her personality
and unable to make a stand.

Are we, then, no more than our personality patterns?

Is it
that I am to see
that there is no deeper essence
beneath the things we believe we are?

Is she, then, all of her, gone
when she disassembles?

Am I to disbelieve in spirit
when I cannot find hers?

A combination of intelligence
and an over-driven nervous system;
some parts striving, some parts of
ego, caring, memories, presence…
and beauty….

Some parts terror and vanity, courage and cowardice…
and hurt….

A form with too much energy to maintain itself
against the entropy we call insanity.

She has crossed the barrier again.
And much like the child’s tale of frosty the snowman …
we dare not love her too long.

gallagher
27 september 78

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

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