Sep 30
FALLING INTO THE PAST
the tick tick of the bike
a dog barks
letter on a Welcome mat
the midnight tick of time
the house sighs
Dad's whistle
ambushed by the smell
of honeysuckle
I fall into the Past
red barn
blue sky
a summer to last forever
Caruso 78
I listen to the scratches
like Time trying to sing along
I kiss the whorl
of a fingertip then
the all of you
your body
drifting away from me
on a tide of hurt
'I don't like the way
your eyes
touch me! '
starlings fly up
I walk upon close bitten grass
a sheep laughs
a car rusts on the beach
the roofless house
looks out to sea
the sea is sleeping
I watch it breathing
wonder what it's dreaming
the house hunkers down
its window eyes
gaze upon the coming storm
crouching under a cloud
a mountain
frightened by the storm
walking upon
the meniscus of sleep
unable to dive in
& here you are
years later looking like
an out of focus photo of your self
*
I was going on with the details she told me about...the break up with her husband and all the things she saw when it was happening and burned themselves into her mind. Then years years later I discover the photograph of her then and the photograph contains some of those details. She is out of focus because she doesn't want to be in the photo and moves away just as the shutter is clicked. So we too step out of the poem and her life. All the details mean something to me as I can still hear them all in her voice....the little details that she observed through her tears. Now when she has died and the photo turns up I can tie together all she told me and all what the photo contains and marry them together to tell more of her story. He had cheated on her and she was heartbroken and couldn't stand his presence. Meanwhile the ordinary world still goes on despite her heartbreak and her life about to change. She was kissing his fingertips and then kissing him more and more when he suddenly blurted out that he had had an affair but that it was all over now and it didn't mean anything. But she couldn't live with that. When I came to write it I mostly remembered all the details she told me about rather than the complete whole story and that is what my mind latched onto. If I wrote it today I would probably come in on a different trajectory and it would be a completely different poem and made entirely different choices. But I like what I have captured here and it is more closer to her perception of how it all panned out. It was her voice and I only shaped it into the poem trying to retain her sense of it all. The last verse is my discovering the photograph and all the grief I experienced on seeing what was once only a voice talking to me in the night and crying and crying as she went over all the details again and again.
the tick tick of the bike
a dog barks
letter on a Welcome mat
the midnight tick of time
the house sighs
Dad's whistle
ambushed by the smell
of honeysuckle
I fall into the Past
red barn
blue sky
a summer to last forever
Caruso 78
I listen to the scratches
like Time trying to sing along
I kiss the whorl
of a fingertip then
the all of you
your body
drifting away from me
on a tide of hurt
'I don't like the way
your eyes
touch me! '
starlings fly up
I walk upon close bitten grass
a sheep laughs
a car rusts on the beach
the roofless house
looks out to sea
the sea is sleeping
I watch it breathing
wonder what it's dreaming
the house hunkers down
its window eyes
gaze upon the coming storm
crouching under a cloud
a mountain
frightened by the storm
walking upon
the meniscus of sleep
unable to dive in
& here you are
years later looking like
an out of focus photo of your self
*
I was going on with the details she told me about...the break up with her husband and all the things she saw when it was happening and burned themselves into her mind. Then years years later I discover the photograph of her then and the photograph contains some of those details. She is out of focus because she doesn't want to be in the photo and moves away just as the shutter is clicked. So we too step out of the poem and her life. All the details mean something to me as I can still hear them all in her voice....the little details that she observed through her tears. Now when she has died and the photo turns up I can tie together all she told me and all what the photo contains and marry them together to tell more of her story. He had cheated on her and she was heartbroken and couldn't stand his presence. Meanwhile the ordinary world still goes on despite her heartbreak and her life about to change. She was kissing his fingertips and then kissing him more and more when he suddenly blurted out that he had had an affair but that it was all over now and it didn't mean anything. But she couldn't live with that. When I came to write it I mostly remembered all the details she told me about rather than the complete whole story and that is what my mind latched onto. If I wrote it today I would probably come in on a different trajectory and it would be a completely different poem and made entirely different choices. But I like what I have captured here and it is more closer to her perception of how it all panned out. It was her voice and I only shaped it into the poem trying to retain her sense of it all. The last verse is my discovering the photograph and all the grief I experienced on seeing what was once only a voice talking to me in the night and crying and crying as she went over all the details again and again.
