Poetry Thursday - Writer's Choice

I choose memory.

I must have written this when I was 23. My typed copy of this poem is foolishly undated, but the night-time drive to the north came in 1992, inspired by watching The Last of the Mohicans togehter and having a full tank of gas; I probably wrote this, then, for her birthday of the following year. The twenty-ninth of July the title refers to is the one year anniversary of my father’s death and the day L's grandfather died. I see a dozen alterations I want to make but I am letting it stand as I wrote it then, unvarnished.

L and I have not spoken in almost seven years now, and the reasons all seem so very foolish.

A Poem for a Birthday

To L, about California, Time, and the Twenty-Ninth of July
From the Other One Who Was There

Inarticulate years roll behind me.
The eloquence of their being
makes up for the lack of saying.
When we speak our words dance like long partnered lovers.
When I would speak of you
music and motion stop.
No words, only images.
California sky,
front porch dusted with the scent of conversation,
night-time drive to the north.
Trans-Atlantic letters pass in flight,
answer each other in advance.
We are like that.
Separate for years,
we return to discover we are growing the same.
It is the Midwestern soil in our veins.

Old phrases echo:
On discovering I am a woman, I write to you of my remarkable find.
On reaching the fence, I look for your dancing feet.
New words come hard.
Too weak to carry the weight of the years they bend and break,
splinter at our feet in mock tribute.
Inadequate, they are all I have.
I shape them like clay,
years of fire burn them into ashes.
I build them like sand castles,
years of waves slip them off the shore.
I carve them like wood,
years of weather wear them into nothing.
Words cannot stand up to the lightning storms of July.
While I write you poems,
the lightning strikes twice and writes the truth
and we are bound better than blood.
My words are blinded in the glare,
I stumble in their inadequacy knowing they are all I have.

A single day surpassing all those words,
transcending even all those years.

Words are such poor stitching.
Time sews us up like quilt work.

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For what others are choosing this Thursday, go here.