Gentle Collisions
extract longing.
fold its edges
in gold paper
to rest on a scale.
the catapult of one
plate plummets
the other swings
bobs and waits
for a leaf of one’s
want to waft down.
such gentle collisions
crush more than steel
crack more than bones upon slight contact.
Copyright © 2015 by Tara Betts. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 29, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“People fail to realize how much devastation comes from loss and how even delicate measures underscore how a feather or the small see-saw of a scale can dole out the last intolerable blow. When I thought of that image, reminiscent of the Egyptian concept of ma’at, I knew that floating feather, and the gilded wrapping paper of grief would unfold into a back and forth of lines that began to resemble the up and down of a scale reconciling its received weight.”
—Tara Betts
Tara Betts
Tara Betts is a Black American poet and the author of Refuse to Disappear (Word Works Books, 2022); Break the Habit (Trio House Press, 2016); and the chapbook 7 x 7: kwansabas (Backbone Press, 2015). She lives in Chicago.