she asked,
what do you really want?
i said,
i’m sure i do not know.
she stared out at the endless sea,
and watched the wavelets come and go
and as the summer turned a page,
the daylight dimmed as by a switch –
and love grew old, or maybe me —
i still cannot remember
which
We drove around on rented bikes
(Though she had decorated hers)
And laughed until our sides got sore
And we could barely pedal
Anymore
She turned to me with haunted look
Atop the spires of her pain,
I took her to my house and bed
And made it snow, and sleet, and rain
Her brown hair tumbled everywhere,
As she arched back in focus pure;
I thought I’d known that haunted look,
But never could
Be sure
you took your camera out into the snow
with joy upon your face of twenty-three,
and laughter swelled upon the fields in drifts
and rang across the hollow through the smoke
from chimneys up and down the backyard way,
as images of icicles and frost
and crystalline embodiments you shot,
in days before you’d ever know how good
a picture was, until developing
the film, you’d see if any was worth much
of anything worth keeping then for viewing,
it all was feel, and happenstance, and chance,
just like a snowfall in a southern winter,
just like a day of laughter in the snow,
just like a memory that’s slowly fading,
your words, your face, your laughter, and your voice
Photo credit : ID 49849775 Talashow | Dreamstime.com
i saw the summer in your eyes,
but knew you would be going;
the waves continued rolling in,
an autumn wind came blowing
for it was time for someone else,
some fanciful newcomer —
and we burned out, like august did:
our eyes still full
of summer
She placed her lips upon a stream
Of pure and crystal water;
That kids behind might push and shove,
Experience had taught her.
And so, she looked back as she drank,
The marble walls, a spectrum —
Then stepped off carefully, to better
Make room for the next one.
She studied, then, the walls up close,
As others tried the fountain;
The pair of steps, for some of them,
Were more or less a mountain.
Though I was seven, like the rest,
My memory can see them —
Alicia at the fountain on
A trip to the
Museum
The past comes, fleeting, back in glimpses:
Places, people, faces, times —
Much that was is gone forever,
All that’s left are words and signs
Signs of wonder, words of meaning,
Times connected to the sun,
Life grows dense and tangled ever,
All so different,
Yet one
You were driving,
Trying to remember to stay on
The wrong side of the road,
As we approached the
City of your ancestors,
Through the farmland of your birth,
And for a few hours, at least,
Not weighed down by
A dying
Relationship
Oh, that summer:
You could give me the company I lacked,
But not
The confidence
