A leap into the fire February 21, 2013

  

The poem she posted yesterday picks up right where her previous poem left off, only taking her argument as to why she should get involved with a married man one step further.

Even if the poem is a reposting from the past, she clearly is sending out a message with it, and making her arguments current. So, in this narrative, I will treat the poem as if she just penned it and tie it into the themes she has been promoting with other recently posted poems.

This is no longer the ethical argument she made when asking herself if she should maintain a platonic relationship with a man she clearly lusts after, but instead it poses the question as to what she should do next – knowing full well the consequences.

“How should I proceed from what I am unable to define?” she asks.

She is still uncertain as to how she got in this predicament, how it happened, if indeed what it is that has happened. Is it even real except in her imagination? Is it real “since it doesn’t exist anywhere but in my mind, she says, raising the same issue her previous poem raised of “a love affair of the mind.”

This sudden plunge into a hormonal black hole apparently came from “a few breathless close encounters of a maddening kind,” suggestive enough of possibility as to inspire frustration in her heart.

This, she says, is not a typical affair, destined to peak and eventually sputter out, but something else, she thinks, something different from what she has previously encountered.

She is fixated on one particular short night, a night seemingly innocent, like a teenage romance, fumbling and bumbling with perhaps too much respect and sweetness, which made it all the more attractive to her, “more curious and the more impossible to define.”

She is very uncertain and certainly scared.

She is caught in an odd dilemma where when she sees him, she is instantly becalmed or as she puts it her “will is soothed,” and yet at the same time it stirs up passion in her, and she is desperate to take the next step, even though she is full of doubts, perhaps even guilt.

“How do you pursue a thing you know might destroy the life of who you care so much for?” she asks, again bring things back to the previous poem where she debated whether or not to take him to bed.

He is obviously married and if she takes the issue to its natural conclusion – to lay claim to his heart as well as his body and take her place on the throne currently occupied by his wife, his old life will be altered forever, and she will be to blame.

“Though,” she points out, “in the end the burden will be borne by two,” meaning him and her.

At the moment, her desire for him is still unexpressed (although part of the purpose of posting the poem may well be to put him on notice about her desires), a private agony or as she put it in her previous poem, something that still remains in her head.

Her struggle, however, is less about whether to do it or not, to keep her passion to herself of engage him, but how to go about giving into her desire. While in her previous poem, she still struggled, this poem makes it clear she’s made up her mind to plunge ahead or perhaps more accurately, she is unable to resist the overwhelming urge.

“I wish I had the power to comply with what I thought was right and true,” she says, by which she means she cannot stop herself from destroying his marriage; she is too consumed with her desire for him.

“All that I want, all that I see, all that I hear is you.”

This is an amazing love poem, far superior to those she emailed me a year ago. This poem is so full of angst, it is difficult not to sympathize with her, anxiety over the fact that she knows what the right thing to do is but cannot comply with because her desire for him is so overwhelming.

Even though the poem asks what she should do next, she clearly has already made up her mind to do it., changing both of their lives, making it impossible for either of them to go back to the safe places their lives occupied before.

What makes this poem great is the fact that is raises fundamental questions about human nature. Life is infinitely more complex than right or wrong.

While we assume we have control over our lives, passion often causes us to leap into the fire with eyes closed, never fully cognizant we might get burned.

To seduce him or not is not the question here; she has already made up her mind.

The question is how do they live with the consequences.

This is not a typical love affair that comes and goes with but a brief moment of anguish.

This man means more than just another roll in the hay.

Unsaid here is the potential down the road that he might come to despise her for this even though she clearly points out the burden of guilt rests on both their shoulders.

To leap into the fire or not. She is clearly already there. We don’t know from this poem whether or not he is as well.

 


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