Your Own Place

I have only had a couple of poems published. This is one of them, published in the Puckerbrush Review in 1983.  Readers will notice my love for alliteration and internal rhymes exhibited in this poem. The line I recall most often is "That water will move to the sea without your worried circumspection." - how true.  Also, the word concupiscence is used deliberately.  It was written with a work colleague and friend in mind who was a young mother and professional.  She often spoke of her struggles to balance being a good wife, mother and her job.  At the time, Dawn and I were living in an apartment in Bangor; had no children and had little of the responsibilities that would later characterize our lives.  When this poem was published, we were living in Westport, Connecticut and had just come back from spending time traveling in Europe.

It seems like a good poem to re-start this blog.  I have been under water at work for the last 8 weeks and finally had a chance this past week to stop and recharge.  This  poem is about stopping and recharging, but underlying that theme is the idea of lost youth and innocence; those lost, open days of childhood before responsibilities for home and hearth; a time and space in which your thoughts can idly move forward and backward in time.


YOUR OWN PLACE
 for p

Go, I pray, to this place
of that; seek the stream bank
where the wind will quiet
all the clatter of the china you
carry, the children, the
concupiscence, and the hissing
of the passing traffic in the streets.

Seek out a lingering place of
sun-warmed ledges, of reeds moving
lightly against the shore.
Forget the great river's run;
that water will move to the sea
without your worried circumspection.

The dove's wings creak in the forest behind you,
flickering through leaf-filtered light,
until she breaks past vine and bough
into the hard plane of river light.
The white wings take no more than dancing air,
cupped in feathered fold;
she dips near the water and arcs
up into the forest again.

Do you remember your own tiny cup
of silver, your christening cup?
Your own white-gloved hand on
the swan boats edge?
How daisies slipped from your fingertips,
lingered, floating on the darker water,
then were drawn away into the
current's sweeping breast?

Is there no way back to places
so long forgotten?

photo credit