Old “Poems”: Forever After

                 Forever After
After all our years have settled like dust
All along our attic floor we gather,
Along with all our dreams, to find a broom
With which to stir these storm clouds up and find
Which one is mine or yours or ours and discover
One so bright and clear to claim together
So that our present, past are thus revealed:
That after seeking, weaving, we find ourselves. Together,
          After all.

For X & me,
September, 1986
(After finishing “Same Time, Next Year”, again)

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Ah, X, whose name I won’t reveal. (She is the same woman in Rejoice, which I’ll post soon I just posted.) Same Time, Next Year was our movie, paralleling how we floated into and out of each others lives for almost 40 years until, well, bridges were burned. I swear she soaked the decks in kerosene, but I lit the match. There will forever remain a bitter taste of soot in my mouth when I recall what we had, what I thought we had, and didn’t.

I’m happy with the scheme I came up with to link the lines together on this one. Did you catch it?

(Old “Poems”: I’ve been writing these little ditties, verses, near-poems since high school. Many are pedestrian; others are real stinkers. Some I still love. I worry that they’ll expire with the inevitable demise of my hard drive, so I decided I’ll put them out here, in the harsh, blistering, stinging, way-too-public cloud to live forever, for good or shame. (To write and self-publish is to court shame. Oh, the hubris!))