In the Valley of Love and Delight
What wrenches the wren from the sky, startles the starling? The owl calls, omens coming in threes, the world lopsided as sausage, meat parts tunneling into the cave.
Like blowing into the straw’s wrapper, sticking our hands deep in the pillow case to make the corners fit.
Bubble travelling through the body of the snake, smaller, smaller, troubling up and gassy, logy with words. It feels wrong when the rooms are prinked out, corners sharp and dirty as cake.
Slotted deep in the crevasse—not temple or tenement—we can leap awhile as if we were flames, we can gaze intense at the blue without ever holding something firm enough to attach a keychain.
Something slides into the oven. Pant leg, glove finger. If a loaf could rise—or a moment. Sudden as an umbrella, trapped in its umbrella case.
The third point forms the peak of the tent or the hook where we hang our pants. Unleash it like a spyglass. Sweet as a sugar cube, salt as a lick. With lipstick.
| Susan Grimm |
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levelheaded: In the Valley of Love and Delight
In the context of the poem’s title, the question “What wrenches the wren from the sky, startles the starling?” suggests that whatever the answer, the guilty party also causes us to fall out of love, to be shaken out of delight. The result is a “world lopsided as sausage,” where one “tunneling into the cave” no longer possesses the levity that allowed for flight.
In love, we do not need “to make the corners fit.” Instead, things simply fit. Losing love can be akin to a “Bubble travelling through the body of the snake, smaller, smaller, troubling up and gassy, logy with words.” Here, the phrase “logy with words” harps back to the heft of love lost that lies in contrast to the weightless feeling of being in love. Going further, the phrase “logy with words” suggests that the limits of language can contribute to the deterioration of romantic relationships.
When in love, “we can leap awhile as if we were flames.” Like fire we are organic, shifting, shapeless, with no defined geometry, no “corners sharp.” Love gives us the ability to “gaze / intense at the blue without ever holding something firm enough to attach a keychain”; that is, love allows us to accept mystery without trying to pin it down, without trying to understand it. But then something undefined “slides into the oven,” presumably the same thing that “wrenches the wren from the sky,” leaving love like an umbrella that possesses the amazing capacity to open but is “trapped in its umbrella case.”
When love goes, things get twisted. To illustrate this, Grimm uses the phrase “hang our pants” in place of the cliche “hang our hat.” The world is upside down. What is “Sweet as / a sugar cube,” is also “salt as a lick.” The final phrase “With lipstick.” complicates things even further. When love goes, the memory of it remains—red traces on a white collar.
– The Editors
