The Abstraction Poem

this is a poem i have been working on and off again on since 2004. It is what it is, i guess. I sort of want to be done with it, so i am posting it.

The Abstraction Poem

I.

They were. That's two not one.
Two separate impressions.
Two trees standing next to each other. They disagreed
on the level that one or both were level.
Both upright, both upright they were both so up
right. They both were.

Hummed one there were two separate trees standing or shifting
toward each other toward a position where they could not see each other
there together in a forest. They were never

they were never anything but these two
trees in a silent forest where the soil was deep.

Someone said the silence was always
a forest, that it was hard to see the silence
for the trees. Someone else was the silence.

Then there was rain and there was pain.
Someone was happy but it was not recorded.
Someone else searched for the meaning of this other
but then they could not. I cannot.
I was that person but I am not.
He is that person but he was not.
We were two trees and two rains falling silently in a forest silence.

There were two trees, she spoke. She swore
I swore there were two trees but he said you said there were not.
There was rain and
noisy sadness. He She We They were two
separate and never decibel spoke the same.

Each rain a different pain or happiness.
Each rain falling in a different direction.
Each rain a different disaster.

II

Once I took a poetry class
where they said it was a good idea
and an interesting exercise to create
a poem where the entire first half
of the poem lied. Then, accordingly,
you could come clean in the second part
and develop this honest tone of voice
and through this honest tone of voice the poem
could take on a tone of redemption.

Have I redeemed myself yet? I tried
to figure out if I should say what those trees
and disaster meant, lie about them
or try to force more ambiguous meaning
into what ambiguity was already there. Was it
there? Is that ambiguous? Am I redeemed?

Even today I am not even sure I can say what it all meant
though I understand the mercy in silence.
Can you understand?

I am not lying but I still do not know
of any particular truth behind these things.