A Year Later

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A friend forwarded this to me on Friendster. It's a poem from Blood Pressure by Sandra M. Gilbert. I'm not much of a poem person but this is one of the very few poems that I like. A Year Later A year later you wonder how you ever loved him. After all, you tell yourself, he was never more than a frog, not even pretending to be a prince. Even then, you think, even in those convulsions of love, you saw the warts, the leafslick spots, the cloak of slime; he was silent because he couldn't speak, motionless because he couldn't walk. And yes, you knew it! Yes! You only loved your own love, only feasted on your own heart, only cherished your fondness for frogs. But even as you rock and reprimand, rock and groan, eyes shut in shame, you remember the forest clearing, the mossy lip of the well, the way the black water fell to the center of the stone world, the shaft of ice that split the grass, and then there were ripples, circles, animal honkings--rivet, rivet-- and your frog leaped out of silence. As you sprawled on the lumpy ground, your own reflection grew in the pool where he rode like a toy boat. You bent to kiss the water near him, wanting to enter his cold glisten, wanting to seize and wear him like a brooch, wanting to swallow him as if he were a measure of some bitter, alien liqueur. Down and down you bent, toward the emerald skin, the golden eyes, closer than ever before to your own wavering face. *** I'd love to hear your thoughts on this poem. Tell me if you like it or not, what you like about it, what you don't like about it -- whatever -- I just want to know what you think.