A branch, a branch, a plum, a fig – a poem by Lorelei Bacht

A branch, a branch, a plum, a fig 
 
Intended as a counterpoint to anticipation: 
life as a narrative a thousand times reconfigured,
reconstructed. The page count an impossible 
arithmetic of days, months, years. The genre
undetermined until the midnight hour 
at the hospital or elsewhere. 
 
Afterwards, still, a grand fabrication: 
my grandmother replayed, reminisced, coloured in 
with wild imaginings - turned nearly mythical, 
the surplus of fiction having now overcome 
the obstacle of her presence, the stubborn 
denial of my claims to shape. 
 
The shape, then: overlays of lines and cycles, 
in long and slow - it all depends on the yardstick, 
which is never granted. False starts and curves 
that circle back onto themselves, the role 
of particular characters nebulous, inter-
changeable, a tangle of misappropriations. 
 
The thick of it: impossible to see the space 
between events and people, the distance
between intention and receipt. An interweave
of echoes, feedbacks, accidents of loops, 
Larsen. It would take a lifetime, another still,
yet another, to attempt to delineate its sense
 
and choose the correct title. In such
implacable circumstances, what purpose hope 
or hope for premeditation? Why favour
one partial plan, deck of imaginings 
over others, infinite in number. A branch,
a branch, a plum, a fig - all equal,
 
their value: undetermined. 

Lorelei Bacht is a European poet living in Asia with her family, which includes two young children and a lot of chaos. Her current work is primarily concerned with motherhood, marriage, and aging as a woman. This year, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as OpenDoor Poetry Magazine, Litehouse, Global Poemic, Visual Verse, Visitant and Quail Bell. She can be found on instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer