… there’s still life ahead
(Eventually, I knew I’d write a poem that’s about writing itself. – Owen)
= = = = =
The sun sets on the bay in peace
Away from where the waters roil;
The gulf is awesome, frightening,
But here, the watcher hides away from toil
I find a pattern in these words:
Tetrameter, that gives its way
At last, to one pentameter –
That final heartbeat of descending day
= = = = =
You really miss the things you didn’t realize you had.
It was a Fall day, brisk and cool
Down at the waterside
We slowly walked along the edge
Attempting to decide
How we would spend our day,
Given the limits of our town:
Two twenty-somethings, bravely bored
Just wandering around.
I can still smell the air, so clear
And see the sky, so blue:
As we ignored perfection
Planning something else to do
If memory was made of glass,
And I could see right through,
Perhaps I’d see it clearly: how
It’s always been with you
Perhaps then I could understand
What led you to each choice:
The demons on your shoulder, and
Your broken inner voice
But such has not been mine, as yet –
Clear-sighted memory –
And so I search these waters for
Some bit
Of clarity
I took a date down to these waters
Many years ago;
To talk and watch the day go down
From light to indigo
And she was right next to me, I
Inhaled her with the air –
A scent I still remember
As though I was sitting there
And friends, among the many things
I know that I have lost;
The roads I will not find again,
The gone whose paths I’ve crossed
She sits inside me, always,
Ever beautiful, and one:
Amid palms & pavilion
At the setting of
The sun
= = = = =
Photo credit : © Erichinson | Dreamstime.com – Palms & Pavillion, Gulf Coast Photo
The kind of trouble that she was
I’d never known in all my days;
But found in new and countless ways
That trouble is as trouble does
Entrancing in her loveliness,
And seemingly so soft and sweet:
I found her virtue truly fleet,
For she, at heart, was pitiless
Our troubles take a certain shape.
I sought, from her, a higher ground:
But when I breathed her in, I found
A trouble I could not
Escape
A long walk.
