from FOR S., 8 POEMS– 7 & 8
A poem.
7 When We’re Gone
I wish you hadn’t deleted
The 600+ messages we shared,
Cavafy, koans, fiesty sex.
I smiled, laughed out loud
At your puns, double entendres
Every time I re-read them.
Your daughters, my sons,
Not horrified, might have found
Intriguing the kind of people
We were that year–the future
Eerily beautiful–a glyph
Lined canyon, then horizon.
8 After
Red bison, black stags, frozen
In fire light on a cave wall.
And, beneath the gallery, there,
Not together, a blonde woman,
A dark-eyed man. This cave
A place of memories, we’ve come
To re-visit the past. A past
Not resolved, only abandoned.
© slovitt 2023
Views: 2112
Been there—done that— but without mentioning Cavafy, koans, fiesty sex. 😉 We all write about our memories differently. I wonder if these are true memories (I sense a yearning) or wishful thinking?
I prefer to think the former. Anyway I enjoyed the read…
gerry.
Gerry, thanks for reading, and commenting. Swep
Hi Swep, I remember the second one from before. First makes me smile. Glad your kids not horrified. Mine cannot stand the thought of their mother being sexually active. Put them off their porrige for sure 😉 I feel I am reading the second stanza differently from before. I am seeing a couple visiting a cave they have visited before on this occasion separately. The feeling that links both is a sense of the archaic, even primitive? The cave is very symbolic as is the firelight. The descriptions of the two people too. Dreams so real and unrealised in the… Read more »
yes, # 8 has been re-written from what you’ve seen before. it reflects the reality, the relationship for all of the struggling ultimately abandoned, and yet they still visit the cave, a place of memories, a real place, more substantial than simply remembering.
Oh, great changes to the ending of When We’re Gone. The whole, told in personal details, evokes a sadness, a deep regret about what ‘didn’t work out’ as read between the lines, so to speak. And in the last two lines there’s a palpable, even heart breaking sense of lost possibilities. Really, really like this.
Wish you’d submitted these separately for I’d definitely make the first a favorite. 🙂
of the 8 poems published together in dec 2014, 6 have been, generally substantially, revised. #7 and #8 are 2 of those. thanks for your good remarks on #7.
We were that year the future and A past not resolved, only abandoned, such telling words, beautifully connected, passion, love, the forever undercurrent in these haunting poems that had to be written.
Leila: thanks for reading and so pleasingly interacting. i remember your remarking on “the kind of people/we were that year” in the previous version, and i think now i’ve written lines that conclude the poem as well. hope you’ll participate in this new site, i’d be interested in any new work of yours. thanks, Swep
Leila, i replied via pm and hit send 39 times. it wouldn’t go. Swep Lovitt–706 S. Church St.–Brookhaven, MS. 39601–USA——-what have you won (It’s my sporting background). thanks, Swep
Thanks Swep, here is a link to my author page for the new book and down the side will give you a clue as to what I have been doing, will get book in post to you…Leila http://www.indigodreams.co.uk/ech-tsm/4589983025
Leila: got your message about the posting of your book and have appealed to richard for help now some 6 hrs ago to no avail. wanted you to know i saw you’d mailed it. Swep
Don’t worry Swep, I assumed there was still a problem, hope it gets sorted for you and hope the book arrives safely and you find some poems to approve of, all best wishes, Leila