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Gentle Collisions
Gentle Collisions
Published on Academy of American Poets (https://www.poets.org)
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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.
Credit:
Copyright © 2015 by Tara Betts. Originally published in PoemaDay on December 29, 2015,
by the Academy of American Poets.
About this Poem:
“People fail to realize how much devastation comes from loss and how even delicate
measures underscore how a feather or the small seesaw 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
Author:
Tara Betts
https://www.poets.org/print/node/421596 1/2
30/12/2015 Gentle Collisions
Tara Betts is the author of Break the Habit (Trio House Press, 2016) and the chapbook 7 x 7:
kwansabas (Backbone Press, 2015). She teaches at the University of IllinoisChicago and
lives in Chicago.
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Date Published:
2015
Source URL: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/gentlecollisions
https://www.poets.org/print/node/421596 2/2