I don't write poetry anymore, which makes me sad sometimes. I don't know where the poems went.............but it's good sometimes to open old journals and remember younger selves.........
Yellow Sails
Your fey markglows on your foreheada brand, a signature.I have covered you
with my own tokens, with kissesembedded in you like tattoos,each one says
"remember me, remember me"
although I know you won't.They will dissolve more quickly than memoryin whatever streambears you off.
Never really touching you,still, I regret nothing.You are that which is worthy,the pale light of another landscapea castaway.
I will remember youas you are now:a boat, sailing into some brave distanceyour yellow sails spreadgladlyon the horizon.
Lauren Raine1982
IN PRAISE OF WATERS
again and againto find ourselves movinginto the shadowlandwhere our best and finest intentionsdrift out of true,and into the truly opposite?
Love becomes hatehope turns into despairinspiration hardens into dogma.
Perhaps,we must find our faces againin dark watersrevealed among fallen leaves,our reflected sins,our cherished scars,the dappled shapes of light and darkthat surface toward a whole.
There is something that wants us to openSomething that pours from the creviceswhere we have brokenSomething that laughs like a river in the morning
(1997)
THE RUNE OF ENDING
What can be said, now,when all words are spentand the word has finally been spoken
we go now to our separate housesrelieved - at least,a course has been named.
Our lives are severed, our story is told.
We will each surely tell that story, and laughand talk late into the night, and kiss lips and thighs saltywith tears and love;but not with each other,not again.
Here the tearing ends, here ends remorse and reprisal,here end dreams and plans.
We will not travel to Scotland, to walk among imaginedmonoliths in the white mists of our imagination.We will not walk again on a warm beach in Mexico,toasting each other with margaritas.That was once. It has to be enough.
I will not call you mine,You will not call me yours.And our cat is now your cat, our teapot is now my teapot.I touch a potted plant, remembering its placeon our breakfast table.We divide the spoils, humane, courteous, fair.
A canyon has opened between us, we are each old enoughto know its name, to view its depths without passion.There is no bridge to cross this time.
Beloved, I must now forgive myself,and you, cast my stone into this abyssand bless the ghost woman
who has not yet cometo stand by your sidewave with grace from across the canyon's lipthen turn, and walk my own path.
1997
These are beautifully written. Thank you for sharing them.
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