The White Queen by Ruth Thompson

The White Queen

Comes the White Queen worrying
and hurrying to keep up and losing
her hairpins. Mind pieces slip
out of their sockets.

Because it is all held together
with hairpins —
the old kind, meant to be invisible?

And they were invisible.
I didn’t know they were there holding my mind together
until I started
to lose it.

Someone whose name I should remember
talks of the sweet dishevelment of love,
but this dishevelment is not sweet.

Or perhaps I am wrong,
perhaps I should

no, could, because one should speak
only in possibilities not rules

but where was I

I could perhaps experience
this dishevelment as sweet —
this mental coming apart

or opening up, which is a more
appealing concept —
the mind dropping hairpins
not in the process of falling
off
in chunks

but of opening up.
Light through the cracks.

So this dropping
off of things — of memory,
cleverness, concentration —

perhaps is not matter for grief
but sign of expansion.

If poetry cannot be made,
perhaps it will come in
as a gift.

Joy creating everything,
even this.

Even the White Queen,
silly and confused and showering
silver hairpins
so beautiful and full of light.

by Ruth Thompson, from Woman with Crows

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Editor’s Note: The fragmented form of this poem perfectly captures the meaning and imbues it with subtle grace.