What you packed roughly

into those years of

weal and woe

that still make me

read your life

and its dynamism,

fatality and strife.

I am seeking Sylvia Plath,

in all the fragments of

yourself that you left behind.

 

For you showed me

your primeval fears

and the haunting manic doom

of the black cloud

that too often descended

on you cold.

 

Yet in the midst of

the irresistible doom

your genius rose wild

and shone a fog light

of truth through the

fate you thought

was you.

 

I am seeking Sylvia Plath,

in all that has been said

and not said in the

years since you gave

away your life

as a gift to

those who seek.

 

And some may say

that you were too absorbed

by death’s final door

and consumed by its presence

in your fragile life.

 

But I say you were taken

not by death at all

but by life,

by all that existence

flung at you

and hurled into

your path and into

your turbulent head.

 

I am seeking Sylvia Plath,

as the women who gave

herself whole in words,

who gave herself in fragments,

in a mysterious sharing

of the shades of blue.

 

15/11/2016