The old jokes do not make him laugh
The old dress doesn’t make him look
The old him was all into her
The lapse of time was all it took
The vanity she entertained
The love she thought forever true
The hollowness we come to see
In who we are
And all
We do
Abandoned bear,
I do know how you feel —
Love first is everything,
And real as real —
Then one day, it’s all gone,
You’re just stuffed cotton —
For toys, we will be toys,
And hence
Forgotten
I know that in relationships
I am no sort of whiz:
But please don’t tell me it’s not me
Because I know it is
It’s me that you don’t want to see
Or talk to anymore:
It’s me that makes you cringe
When I come walking through the door
Listen, I will not make scenes
I will just go away:
Although I’m me, I still have pride –
Just much less
Every
Day
And now we are just so much driftwood
Washed up on the beach;
What was alive has torn away, and
Drifted out of reach
From what it was that gave it life:
The tree it was part of —
And now we are just so much driftwood
Fallen out
Of love
She is the one who haunts him still
Though years have passed, as e’er they will,
Because he knew her worth, but chose
The easy way, when it arose
He’s looked, but cannot find her like,
And now he’s come to know, and rue:
That if you quit on love, sometimes,
You find that love can quit
On you
Her landlord’s kids have strewn the walk with toys;
She smiles as she steps around a trike.
She hears within a laughing, running noise,
The joy of children to the childlike:
And after some brief play, she’s off to hike
The longish stairs that lead her to her room.
She flips a switch to chase away the gloom
That never really leaves nor really stays
(Except when tears unbidden come at night)
But she is cheerful on the worst of days.
She pauses by the mirror at her sight
(The wind has blown today – her hair’s a fright)
But soon downstairs she goes to talk and eat,
Before she makes her evening’s long retreat.
Up in her room, she thinks of what she’ll write.
Ideas she has, like waves or grains of sand —
She’ll work on three or four of them tonight,
Then stop to listen to a favorite band
Remembering, at once, his darkened hand
And that he is no longer by her side:
The man who played the groom to her young bride.
The house is quiet, all the kids in bed;
The night is still and peaceful in the main:
And love has never died within her head,
Nor been defeated by the throbbing pain
Of heart so full, it cannot all retain —
But still, the graceful night enfolds its own,
And love surrounds her, even when alone
Holding, for a moment,
Diff’rent times and seasons:
Tossed about by heartache,
Lost in all the reasons
Much gets out of focus
With a life’s unfolding;
Soon bereft, releasing,
With what’s left for holding
My ‘feeling hurt’ has made you quite defensive,
You’re angry that I fell in love with you;
I had no right, because you never loved me,
I realize all that now. But still, it’s true
That I must grieve a dream that only I had,
And grow hot in the foolishness I feel;
To know that what I came to hope and cherish
Was nothing in your eyes,
And never
Real
The boy and girl who traveled here
Have vanished in the swirl of time;
In acres of seclusion sits
A cabin in a glade
And trav’ling far, I stop my car,
And breathe in autumn’s snowy clime;
Recalling now, in fits and bits
The promises we made
The key still hidden by the door,
I turn the lock and enter in;
The stove, the bed, still side-by-side
Where once we lay, entwined
And then, anew, the scent of you,
The soft feel of your glowing skin,
The many ways of love we tried
Come crowding in my mind
The promises we didn’t keep
The hours that we didn’t sleep
The hands that we held thoughtlessly
With love but lightly clad –
The acres of seclusion we
Took with us out into the world;
Two broken people, using up
The one last chance
They had
