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.


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