Cleave
Of all the ways
that language fails us
this may be the most egregious:
To forcefully split in two
To adhere or cling to
another lesson in duality
how a thing and its opposite
can share the same single bed
in the same
single-syllabled apartment
in the old-English part of town.
I used it once when younger
in a poem about a girl
I still think of on occasion
though I can’t recall right now
whether I wielded it
like a hammer and chisel
or a bucketful of glue.
Art Nahill is a physician writer living in Auckland New Zealand. He has previously published on both sides of the equator and is working on his fourth book of poetry.