Jan Goldman
Pledge
Pledge me no more trivial conversation
No mix of this and that better left unsaid.
Pledge me the skeleton of things, the green heart
Show me the clean, clear center only in primary colors.
Pledge me a Japanese landscape
Everything simple to the point of abstraction or
Pledge me the sea, seen from the side of a sailboat
Corrugated surface of blue, its hidden depths
Flirting with sunlight.
Pledge me the outside of the outside
Let me find my own way in.
Bio
Jan Goldman is a clinical psychologist who has practiced in Jenkintown, PA. for many years. She has previously published in The Jewish Women's Literary Annual, The Edison Literary Review, Families, Systems, and Health, and the Tookany Review. Jan wrote Pledge while attending Peter Murphy's Poets and Writer's Getaway and listening to a poem in Welsh, of which she couldn't understand a word, but also called Pledge.