Come join in and share poetry at dVerse Poetry Pub, it’s Open Link Night–and sorry dVerse readers, this is the poem I meant to link to.
(rough draft)
PhotosbyDeniece @ Etsy
I still picture you
as sun-kissed in rayon
skirting up the tree behind me
one of us must have led
but who knew
how I followed you
your independence a purple
gloss I mimicked
muddling my own insecurity
my need to belong
chasing and being chased
like the trains we’d jumped
that took us around
the outskirts of town
or the mornings before school
running through the milkweed
and thistles
to get to the shore
where we’d leave our
shoes in the sand and swim
in the green lake
underwater I’d open my eyes
and look at how the sun
beams streaked my legs
in the space of water
and you, not so far away,
suspended beneath the surface
I come up for air and
you have left, your emails
say places like Naples and Europe
and I sit in my chair
in the dead of winter
wondering how you did it
how you got to what we were after
without exploding
how you fell in love
with a writer on another beach
I’m
here
etching scars across the ice
poignant, everywhere is some kind of wilderness perhaps?
So poignant, so wistful – I know that feeling well. Beautifully expressed!
Thank yOU!
interesting….some nice alliteration that give this a nice push forward….it is intersting how others can move on while we seem stuck in teh after….adventuring on without us…
What an insightful examination of a changing relationship. Your details about climbing trees and swimming and other familiar things emphasize the exoticness (um…that may not actually be a word, but…you know what I mean, lol) of the friend’s current life. I think this is really well done.
Thanks Mary, very much
O such a sad and heartfelt longing in this poem. I was gripped by it from beginning to end, Amy. How hard it is for us, particularly during the early years of adulthood, to find that nothing is permanent; things and people will inevitably change, but how we sometimes long for that sense of permanence, the constant, the always there, even now in my dotage, I sometimes feel that too. Thank you for sharing this wonderful vignette of a story with us, Amy.
You’re so right–longing for that sense of permanence, especially as we get older. Ahh childhood
You convey such connection between the two characters as well as between narrator and setting. The imagery feels like sepia toned photos, true, but shaded and faded. A lovely piece.
such a sadness and such prettiness of imagery nevertheless, though the last lines, scratching into the ice, show the depth of contrast
“wondering how you did it
how you got to what we were after
without exploding”
and that’s maybe what the difference is, the “without exploding” -
there’s so many things i wish i had done, could do, would do, but i also know, if i did, i risk “exploding” –
so the things done, where we risk the risk, those are the ones, it seems, for us; best wishes