Collected....

Collected...A Poem for a Black Vase

I greet you brightly
Though as a curiosity and a dark enigma.
I am open enough
To display a good handul--a respectable collection!

I extend to you
Too much miscellania to list!
I bring them fully:
The whims, fancies, edicts and truths, with their far-reaching origins.

I hear laughter
Telling me that my dirge is not mournful.
I hear sighing
Telling me without words that my comedy is an exasperation.

I recoil the offering,
Tucking in like a show horse conditioned for the ring.
I become still,
Tending the secret garden silently behind closed doors.

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The vase was actually a simple glazed black vase that had been used as a pencil holder. It had a hand around it that seemed to be offering you the vase when the fingers were toward you, and withdrawing it when the fingers were turned away. That contrast, along with the fact that it was black on the outside and white on the inside, led to the contrast between the first two and last two stanzas, and the alternating use of "I" and "T", which is a symbol of the revelation of "I" being banned or fenced off. A discussion of the internal censor that plagues writers actually inspired the train of thought; the vase helped to shape it.

The reference to the show horse being tucked would probably only make sense to another horse nut. That show ring posture is called "going collected", and the use of that image was inspired by the title.