Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Poem: A Memory (2012)


A tragic fable.

*          *          *


A Memory

I still recall
The day she came to lie beneath me.
I pretended not to notice
The ocean waves
The wind made of her long, loose hair;
I could see she wasn’t there for me.
Firm-planted, I stared at the sky.

It wasn’t until I heard the laments
Rip-tiding within her
That I cast my gaze down
To where she muffled her sadness into the earth.

I made no sign;
I simply stood,
A stock-still sentinel,
That she might avail herself
Of my quiet protection.

She touched me as she rose,
Her scrabbling fingers finding the crags
In my rough and wizened skin.
I confess that in my deep-rooted places,
I curled with excitement and fear
At her soft attentions.
Lonely things feel such a thrill at being touched.

Without even giving her name,
She grappled me,
Clutching and grasping,
Gasping as her sobs broke over
Her poorly-constructed levies.
Did she know that already,
I could have lived
On her glance?

In one of my outstretched arms,
I rocked her,
Like the soft back-and-forth
Of a pond post-storm.
She clung to me,
And I naively planned
A forever of holding her.

She took in long, unconfident breaths
As the raging current slowed within her;
She no longer watered me.
I shivered
With a peaceful, whispering rustle
And supposed that this
Was how we’d go on.
I didn’t see her face.

Though I would keep her from stumbling,
I didn’t know she’d let herself fall.
The knot she tied with her tear-wet fingers
Seized me in a taut embrace,
And the ground
Seemed to wash out beneath me
As her grip receded
And she cascaded down
With a sickening wrench.

Even then,
With the life wrung from her,
She held fast to me still.
She rippled in the breeze
On the end of the death cord
That bound me to her.
I folded inside myself
And tried not to wither.

She’s long gone now,
But cut me open
And you’ll see the atrophied rings
That were choked
By her embrace.

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