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Start with this: I don't quite get the logic/simile of the final two lines, but that's just me talking — a very puzzled thinker : ). But I think I will come around to liking it once I think more about it.
The final line is a beauty.
I feel like I've not heard before the comparison f the shape of Michigan being like the shape of a mitten. It is a wonderful sonic/alliterative visual and is carried forward beautifully as the vehicle for a memory that seems woven, at times snugly and at times loose-knit. The deep dive between the cushions comes seemingly out of nowhere but I roll with it to be a search for more fabric to the loose-knit memory — but it is lost. The metaphors work well together: the mitten, the fabric that is a memory, the search between the cushions — all woven together in a wild, imagist kind of way.
There are a few killer lines that hooked me (pun!) as I wove my way through the fabric of memory.
I love the imagery of the memory's ability to both bind together and expand — That's the imagination in high gear!
As to the poem, it feels like a recollection of a tryst with an American woman that still lingers and has become a part of the fabric of your life lived.
For the record, I think Michigan looks like a turtle head.
I grew up in New Jersey, which looks like a bow tie... Or the bust of an old man in a square hat staring at Pennsylvania... Or a widget you fidget with — depending on how much coffee you’ve spilled down you : )
Wonder-filled poem, Mark. Trademark Mark.
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