Monday, May 31, 2010

Tom Thompson In Orbit

Big Frank is a big fan of Troy Jollimore. He's put in a few of his poems before. This one is on the theme of unrequited love; a topic of some interest to Big Frank. More on that in posts to come. For now - let's take a look at this poem. The images of the moon with its face turned perpetually towards the earth and its face turned to the sun but unable to be with it does a wonderful job of capturing unrequited love. Enough - on to the poem.

Tom Thomson in Orbit
by Troy Jollimore

His enemies take comfort in his pain.
So tries to hide it from them. Hides himself,
for pain is of himself the visible part,
It is the craters and the so-called seas
(for they are dry as chalk and bone dust) whose
expanses occupy his surface. Poor Tom,
he is an open sore, orbiting round
an earth he though was sun, until he found
she was in orbit round a man she could
not have, nor he bear. O it doth blow his mind,
this revolution of Copernican
dimensions. no wonder his path in life's
so hard to calculate. (He keeps his face
always to her.) No shock he can't think straight.

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