the walls of metal,
caves of steel,
that we made warm
with our four hands
are now returned
to what they were --
and there is nothing
strange in this:
that fabric, love, and flesh
should make
a living something
out of mineral and dust.
what is this light of loneliness
that brings to bear
significance
of things that passed
unnoticed but for those
who lived within this space?
tell me again
why everything
is singing in
the heart that was
and calling out for someone
who won't answer
She asked me to come see her.
We walked beside the bay,
An omnipresent sky above
A fingerpainted day --
She asked me not to leave her.
I said I had to go,
For the sun goes down on everything
We'll ever feel
Or know
he said, "now just wait --
i believe we were stopping
outside of memphis --
and she -- i think my wife -- was
right there and then -- what happened?"
we drive on,
silence piling up
in new lands,
you, a mystery --
always there,
never quite present --
each half-phrase
sorrowed in something
off beyond,
a new betrayal
clothed in thanks
and elsewhere wishes
(First published December 2013. – Owen)
In 1975, when I was thirteen years old, my parents paid for me to attend Interlochen National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. I was there to study piano with Peggy Neighbors Erwin, a famous piano teacher from Coral Gables, FL. I had the summer of my life there, enjoying drawing classes; attending theater, ballet, opera (which truthfully I did not enjoy at that age), and symphonic concerts; and, of course, studying and practicing the piano. I made friends, saw sights, got exercise, had a sick weekend at the infirmary, attended church, developed unrequited crushes on girls, and brought back a lifetime worth of memories. I also cemented a lifelong of love of classical music, live drama, and the arts in general.
I was there for ten weeks, and didn’t really get homesick until about the eighth week. I wrote very detailed letters home, describing the place and what all we did, letters my mom had until very recently when she gave some of them back to me.
When my father had retired from the Air Force four years before, we had moved into a three bedroom ranch-style house on the opposite end of Florida from where Ms. Erwin lived. The yard that came with that house was odd in that it included an empty lot next door and half of an empty lot behind the house. A year or so after we moved in, my dad went away to school for 10 months, and when he came back, he used the half-lot in the backyard to build a workshop for his new business: custom-building and repair of musical instruments. The empty lot next door he used for a great labor of love — a garden. He grew fresh strawberries, onions, tomatoes, watermelons, and I don’t remember what else in that garden.
That empty lot yard was kind of important for another reason. It contained half of our semi-circular driveway.
When I returned from camp, my parents had sold the lot next door. It was weird because a fence went up and we no longer had a semi-circular driveway: we had a quadrant. Easy to drive in, but clumsy to back out. I thought my dad would miss his garden, but he said it was so much trouble keeping the squirrels out that he was relieved to be rid of the nuisance.
I didn’t think much more about that empty lot; the people who bought it never built anything on it during the remaining years my parents lived in that house.
Around 1996, we were back at my childhood home in Florida visiting my parents. My whole family had gathered there: my older sister and her boyfriend (now husband), my older brother, my (now ex-) wife, my 10-year-old stepson, and my 1-year-old son. We were going through boxes of old pictures, and my ex, who was a very inquisitive person, was asking my mother questions about the photos.
“Now where was this taken?”
“That photo — was from the lot next door, back before we sold that. We had a garden there we loved to work in, and that was taken when were getting ready to bring in our first strawberries. They were so good, so fresh.”
“Why did you sell the land?”
“To pay for Interlochen.”
I was stunned.
It had never occurred to me as a child that my parents made financial sacrifices for me or for us. I knew that there were things we wanted we could have, other things we wanted we couldn’t; this was par for the course. But it had cost my parents quite a bit to send me to that place, and the eyes of a thirty-four-year-old man saw it very differently than a 13-year-old boy had.
“I never knew,” I told my mom. “I didn’t realize you had to sell land so I could go there.”
My mom laughed a kind of joyous laugh. “You had the best time there. Probably no week of your life went by for the next five years when something wouldn’t remind you of that place. Best money we every spent on you.”
In my teens, I cared a lot about myself and my friends; by my twenties, I carried about very little else, and I blamed my parents for both their shortcomings and mine. I am ashamed to think of the way I sometimes spoke to my father; and it saddens me greatly to realize the poor return they got from me for all of the time, love and money they invested.
Still, that summer I spent at Interlochen was one of the great formative experiences of my life. My parents gave up a lot — literally — so I could go. The only thanks they got from me for years were the excited stories I would continue to tell about the place. This made it all worth it to them, something I understand now as a parent.
Because, when you love someone, you don’t do things for them for the thanks.
We look back on the modern world With something like nostalgia; For time will flatten every hill, And humble every alpha Who claims their days to be the best. We're introspective, seldom, But still can smile harmlessly At this, a hearty welcome.
There was a once and long ago, That industry was everywhere; And though some hated those machines, We used them to increase our share Of all the good that this world had. And with those goods, we did more good: We sang in homes and in the bars, And it was simply understood That this was what the new world was. Alas, we didn't, couldn't know The good would move to somewhere else, And we'd be left with Long ago
at odd hours, it
all comes back to him, or
she does --
he could not have been that young.
(years steal our possibilities,
giving them
to strangers.)
how old would she be now?
summers were made of warmth, and
so
was
she
he imagines.
was it all a fantasy?
if so,
why can he still smell the water, and
hear
the
laughter?
“Where does love go when it’s gone?”
‘Wherever it came from.”
A message sent from Florida Where you and I were once... you know... I guess your reminiscing, since It seems that time, and wine, have flowed Into the veins you call your life. I say I hope I find you well, Then slowly you unfold a tale Of loss and choice, of ebb and swell -- And I see years long past remain Within each of us, differently. I seek to understand, because However things have come to be I do not, could not, wish you ill. You were my lover, are my friend, And I wish you the happiness Far fewer know than now pretend. For each of us, and all of us, There's nothing simple, now or then: There's myriads within each heart, Both what we are and what we've been.
When a person writes in the volume that I’ve written, it’s easy to see patterns. That’s a nice way of saying I write the same things over and over.
When I started writing poetry here, I spent much of the first few years reliving old relationships. Part of it was to better understand myself, but an equally important part of it was trying to understand better the women I had been involved with, something I don’t think I’d done a very good job of at the time.
Of course, I realized the obvious things, looking back. As a younger man, I may have been overly focused on the physical aspects of the relationship, for instance, or at least, focused to such a degree that I let other parts of relationships flounder. I also realized that being selfish comes pretty natural to me: I never had to read an article or watch a YouTube video to learn how to do it.
In addition, there was this: girls often find early that boys don’t always treat girls like, well, human beings. This tendency in us guys is very pronounced, and it is not always as ill-intentioned and baneful as it can be. I was interested in working through why I struggled to see women as just other people, then using that knowledge to better understand the actual women I had dated.
Eventually, life strips away the pretense and the fantasy in any relationship that is carried on long enough; all too frequently, then, people come to resent the other person for not being what they never were. Love is less about embracing fantasies than respecting and valuing realities.
When my ex girlfriend in the poem above messaged me, it was to talk about a breakup she had recently been through. The reasons she had broken up with him were perfectly understandable, at least to me, but I could see her struggling with the notion that it had in some way been unrealistic perfectionism on her part that had ended the relationship.
All I could think to say was, if regret could be converted to energy, it would be the ultimate renewable energy source.
“Where does love go when it’s gone?” she asked me.
“Wherever it came from,” I said. “Or to wherever it is going next.”
