Poetry

i want to remember and
lengthen like this
moment it has taken me
all day to recognize

it nested so perfectly
beside me, fitting
into my breath and
softening my form with sun-
shine and wind, as if
it had always been,
without measure or circumstance

how laughable, this perception
of form, forshortened
on my own horizon,
thinking on my history as if
time was a thing which held
meaning

i leave my watch at the table,
wander the wind and
stretch skyward

21/01/08

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

She says that our lives are dreams
and we can move from one to another, lucid.
In my mind I see her stepping up into
some new color and sound shaped round
in the sky, a story in a soap bubble three feet
above my head, one foot
behind her just long enough to pop
the one before.  She says you can move
from one to another, like walking through a door
and shutting it behind you.  I see
the gossamer filaments of past lives clinging to our soles
and changing our stride, though each notion
of dream may be higher than the last.
It is dizzying I suppose,
the view from way up here, so many steps from my youth.
But there are so many bubbles now
it only feels like dancing.

______________________________________________________________________

1991

My memories trapped you like a fly in amber,

a certain moment, a certain light.

You, sitting on the rain wet cement steps

in one of Portland’s city parks, head turned to look

up at me standing.

A wry half smile on your face, shaved head damp

and dusted with morning.

A cigarette in your right hand.

You had just finished telling me why

you didn’t give a shit about the system, why

nobody got it.

Backpack.

Blue Jacket.

This one always comes first

when my mind calls your name, ushered out from

the dusty files of days gone by.

There are more like it, all from that time, and I can

get them if I ask for the bigger file.

A scrap of letter, a heart calling out, shared poems.

These are shots of you

as you were, as my memory holds you.

Your life now is a story to me; I have no experience of it,

of you for so many years now.

So when I asked you why,

I was only asking for that story, not in any way

accusing you for the progress and change

you have deftly negotiated.

I’m sure the old pieces are pushed far into the

back of you now, your present full

of breakfast cereal and family, the challenges and joys

of heaped up days.

In amber you have never left me, never married

or grown older. We are young there in my mind,

still talking to the trees

in rain.

Heads thrown back.

Laughing.

1 Response so far »

  1. 1

    linden said,

    Beautiful my poetess! You do have the gift of picture painting with words.


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