Not One More Time

Every myth is a poem and every poem is a myth that points beyond itself.  Each symbol I use in my poems is personal and (occasionally) universal. That is the function of poetry, I think, to take personal experiences, personal myths and symbols and discover their universality, their springing from the collective. In this poem, which is about loneliness while away and loneliness within a relationship, I used a specific personal symbol.  Three months after Dawn and I started dating, during Christmas vacation, she sent me a picture of herself standing in front of the living room fireplace of their home in Westport.  She is deadly serious in the photo, unsmiling, silent, yet vulnerable. On her finger, she is wearing a gold ring I had given her that had belonged to my father.  It was the promise of that photo that I reflected on in this poem, written 26 years and a marriage later.
I wrote this poem on the night of June 5, 2001 while sitting at a bar in the Vinoy in St. Petersburg, Florida. I wrote it out, more or less as it appears here.   For many years I carried this poem in my wallet and recently found the folded paper from which I take the poem while doing some cleaning.  At the time, I felt a deep sadness and loneliness and tried to express it in the image of the halyard striking the mast of the empty boat, in the receding train and in the windswept pine.  I carried this poem with me and re-read it often.  I don't carry it now. Things change.

Not One More Time


The wind-bent pine,
A boat knocking at its moorings.


Sitting in an empty bar,
"Do you miss her?" no longer
counted in hours or days.
Years sweep away to that young girl
with the long auburn hair and the 
serious gaze.  Those hips that
promised such pleasure.


No last look at the train
pulling out into the rain,
Just a death and life commingled
until one predominates
and it is finished.

Except there is no resurrection
this time.  
                     Only a boat
knocking at its moorings,
    the windswept pine.


Image source

Eel Grass by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sunday afternoon, last day of my vacation.  This has been a great two weeks, even if I haven't quite been able to produce any writing from it yet.  Did some reading and relaxing and except for a bout of food poisoning at the end, was in every way a perfect vacation.  However, every good thing comes to an end, I suppose.  I know I am not looking forward to going back to work, but who ever is?  Anyway, this poem from Second April, by ESVM pretty much expresses how I will be feeling at this time tomorrow.

No matter what I say,
   All that I really love
Is the rain the flattens on the bay,
   And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
   At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach;
   Nothing in this place.




Image Credit

Pictures from Aquinnah and Gay Head Lighthouse

Fragments of a Poem

Hancock Beach, Martha's Vineyard

These fragments are an appropriate entry for this week.  I am working on a new poem to capture my experiences this past week on Martha's Vineyard. I am trying to focus on positive images and themes and as you can see up 'til now, most of my poems are emotional responses to situations.  What I am working on now are poems that reflect my everyday experiences, including my vacation.  I hope to have something more next week, but in the meantime, this poem describes my attempts to get 'behind' the meaning of the poem to get closer to the unreflected experience that was the genesis of the poem. That is Dawn and her brother in the photo on the best beach on MV.  In the original, the word 'empty' in line 13 was 'Algerian' - homage to Camus and his essays on growing up on the beach under the blazing North African sun.


        i
The poem  pure and simple
Unadorned   like Sunday afternoons
old wall clocks   tick tock tick tock
the day moves slowly.
I long this Sunday afternoon
to write a single verse
uncluttered  empty vessel
into which is poured
the reader's secret longings.


       ii
The sterile line  unclouded
unblemished verse   like an
empty beach     like . . . .


       iii
The pure  word   wherein
all holy beings lie
in repose, from which is
poured
the reader's secret longings.